The developer behind the game (Frontier Developments) developed Wallace and Gromit In Project Zoo a few years ago, so they have had experience with the franchise. This game follows the storyline of the movie very closely. Those who aren't familiar with the movie though will be able to pick the game up very easily as the game basically retells the movie with very high quality FMV. In the movie, Wallace (man) and Gromit (dog) take on a rabbit who is trying to destroy the vegetable gardens of innocent citizens. This may seem like a fairly dodgy story, but it's actually very clever.
Here chicken, chicken, chicken
Recently children games have tried to stay away from a linear fashion, and Wallace and Gromit continues this tradition. There are three playable characters (Wallace, Gromit and Hutch), which help to offer a decent element of choice. The most unique feature of this title is the day and night system. At any stage you're able to change the setting of the game from day or night. Each setting brings about new missions with different objectives. The missions don't really appear in a specific order, which means you can do any mission as you see fit.
The missions themselves are fairly varied, but don't really feature anything new. As you would expect there are a lot of rabbit hunting missions, but the difference is how you actually catch the rabbits. It may seem simple to just catch rabbits, but you need to decide which inventions to use to actually catch these rabbits, some of the inventions are better than others though. However, as most of the objectives are just to catch rabbits, the experience can become a little familiar after a while, even with the non-linear gameplay.
Gameplay wise the game is fairly solid for a kids game. Any game, which features non-linear gameplay, is great, but the difficulty level has definitely been toned down to appeal to children. As such, if an adult picks this game up they are likely to be able to complete the missions without any strain at all. All of the missions in the game are very basic, and we would have loved to see a few different missions so the experience felt a little fresh.
I don't think that's safe...
Frontier Developments really have mastered how Wallace and Gromit should look from their previous title. The graphics are even better than that version and the environments are fairly immersing and large. We didn't experience any slowdown at any stage, but we would imagine that the game isn't exactly pushing the PlayStation 2 to it's fullest potential.
The video sequences look incredible and really did us have us fairly engaged. However, and one thing we cannot stress enough is that the cut scenes are not skippable. The very first cut scene goes for about ten minutes and a lot of the cut scenes are fairly long, which becomes extremely annoying if you just want to play through the game. We're getting really tired of games that don't let you skip cut scenes, and this is yet another title to fall victim to this issue.
The game has fairly decent voice acting and the humour provided throughout the game is similar to that of the movie. The background noises are basic, but this is what it was like in the movie, anyway. Overall the sound is very faithful to the movie, which is something to be commended.
I don't think there is any rabbits there Gromit..
Frontier Developments have included a fairly decent amount of collectables and unlockables in the game for the diehard Wallace and Gromit fans. Some of the unlockables are better than others, but it's generally fairly entertaining running around trying to find them. The main mode of the game, though, won't last very long as it is simply too easy. Even children may find the game a little basic after a while, as it never really deviates from the simple formula; which is a shame. We would have liked Frontier Developments to have taken a few chances and deviated a little bit away from the movie. There is also a two player co-op option which is a decent addition, this allows two players to play through the story mode, but if both of you are playing this, it makes the game even easier.
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a basic game based on a child's movie. As a movie to game adaptation this game isn't actually that bad, but it is unfortunately a little disappointing that whilst the movie can appeal to children and adults, the game is strictly designed with children in mind. This game isn't going to win any awards for originality or complexity, but if you're after a non linear child's game that is based on the movie then you'll be pleased to know that this game is actually a fairly decent title, which left me very surprised.
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