Genre: Adventure
Developer: Telltale Games
Players: 1
Retail Price: $35 (PC), TBD (XBLA)
Availability: PC, Xbox Live Arcade
The rate at which the number of intellectual properties Telltale handles ballooned fairly rapidly last year, to the point where one wonders when its employees are allowed to sleep. With a meager two months’ break, they’ve returned with their third flagship adventure series, this one turning the British dial past 11 and all the way to ‘tea and biscuits.’
This marks the first time that a Telltale game has come to the Xbox 360. The Live Arcade version of the game is unreleased as of this writing, but is coming soon. Since this will be a new market for their games, Fright of the Bumble Bees contains a fairly basic tutorial: essentially, the gist is that you can interact with people and objects, putting some of the latter into your inventory to use on others in the future. Gromit needs a new chess piece, so you can find one in the room and put it into your inventory. Walk over to him and use the item on your canine companion to hand it to him.
As this is their first release on a non-point-and-click system, the controls have been reworked. The XBLA version of course uses the 360 controller, and the PC version can also be controlled with a gamepad. Instead of clicking to move, you either use the analog stick or WASD. The inventory can be brought up with shift or X on the 360 and you interact with people or objects by clicking or scrolling through them with the right analog stick or the right bumper. As I’m a stalwart console player, I surprised myself by preferring the keyboard and mouse configuration because of its — PC gamers, arm your smirks — more accurate controls. It was perfectly playable on a controller, but trying to get to the one object you wanted to by flicking past the rest of the visible ones could get tiresome.
On the other hand, the controller did prove itself invaluable at times. One of my only complaints with the adventure genre is that there are times when I miss what appears to be a background object and run around aimlessly for a while. Since you can choose any of the selectable objects by hammering on the bumpers, I could wander around and see if I missed anything. This helped at least twice; it felt a little like cheating, but it also felt like I wasn’t frustrated.
Even beyond the control scheme, this felt like a markedly different game from Telltale’s previous offerings. Most notably, there were no dialog trees to be found. This seemed almost heretical, but at least in this episode for the most part the focus seemed to be on nonverbal interaction over a witty back-and-forth. The lack of talking can be perfectly natural, since you play as both Wallace and Gromit at different times: they each have their own inventory and can sometimes access some objects that the other can’t. Certain things never change, though, like the focus on threes: collect three items to progress, deal with three groups of ne’er do wells and free one of your inventions in a three-step process. I understand why, since it allows you to get the hang of what you have to do without becoming tiresome; it’s just a noticeable device carried over from previous games.
It’s no secret that I am an unabashed Anglophile: a resident of the British isles could charge me by the hour to listen to a phone book being read, and I’d pay it. Wallace and Gromit, then, should be right up my alley, but while the game was entertaining, there were less laugh out loud moments than during my trip through Sam and Max Season One. That’s not to say it wasn’t funny: instead, the enjoyment was generally set at a constant smile rather than ever peaking. You’ll be disappointed if you’re looking for non sequitur Max retorts, but if you’re a fan of Wallace and Gromit then you should already be prepared to get your enjoyment from the absurdity of the inventions and situations, and on that front you will be well sated.
Before I started the series, I wondered why there were only four episodes in the season but the same price was being charged. Had adventure games fallen victim to These Tough Economic Times? Once I dug in, though, I understood the reasoning: there are fewer episodes, yes, but they’re meatier. Instead of the fairly standard two hours or so that I was expecting, it took me over three and a half to finish. I assume this is so that the new console audience doesn’t cry foul at a shorter experience, but regardless of the explanation, don’t fret about being shortchanged on the content.
When all was said and done, I discovered that while I had thoroughly liked the game as I played through it, there wasn’t as much of it that I loved as I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong: this is certainly a solid experience, and especially if you’re new to the genre then you owe it to yourself to see what all the fuss is about. Even if you’re a Telltale veteran, Wallace and Gromit is different enough to bring some surprises to the table. And also, I mean, cheese!
