Wallace & Gromit tussle with Feathers McGraw again, or is it loose, unresponsive control and terrible camera angles?
From the first menu screen, it's obvious a lot of thought has been put into the game. Little touches really bring out the Wallace & Gromit atmosphere. The graphics may not be impressive at first glance, but they're unmistakably Wallace & Gromit, and in that regard they're excellent. The soundtrack, like the graphics, isn't something that will knock you off your feet, but, also like the graphics, it does follow the Wallace & Gromit theme quite well. The voice acting is spot on, and the story is worthy of the characters as well, with little comedic touches throughout.
It's when we start to look at the whole thing as a game rather than an addition to the Wallace & Gromit world that things start to fall apart. You control Gromit through some pretty standard platform game setups; the ice world, the lava world, the mine cart environment, and so on. There are some interesting puzzles here and there, and a couple nice little vehicle sequences, but the game focuses mainly on collecting items while jumping from one precarious position to the next and avoiding or dispatching a small selection of enemies. Pretty standard platform fare, and if it was done right it would make for a nice little game. But, alas, it's just not done right. Control is frustratingly loose and at times unresponsive, which turns the game's heavy focus on jumping into a big fat pain in the butt. Adding insult to injury, the camera is quite uncooperative, often forcing you to make your poorly controlled jumps completely blind. The weapons Wallace invents and builds for Gromit along the way are difficult to aim accurately, and the first-person view you can go into is extremely limited - you can aim, but you can't move.
The levels themselves are somewhat neat in that they do bring a Wallace & Gromit feel to the generic platformer environments, with interesting little background animations and touches. But they're fairly small and there's often a lot to do stuffed into a small space, which leaves you feeling a bit overwhelmed at first. Once you start along though, you'll find yourself less overwhelmed and more confused as you try and figure out exactly what the game expects you to accomplish. The fact that there's a hints section available that lists the tasks needed to beat a level is just an indication that the levels aren't as intuitive as they should be.
The problems don't stop there. An impressive number of unlockables exist. But they're impressive in volume only, since all but a select few are merely clips from the shorts, which fans will likely already have on VHS or DVD. Unlocking them is also a chore. You'll find a fair number of coins your first time through a level, but if you want to unlock everything you need to find all the coins. You can replay levels you've already passed, but doing so is pretty clunky since you can't save at any point in the replayed level and are forced to start at the very beginning every time you replay it.
There are glitches too. Jump into the wrong place and you'll get stuck for a second, only to then find yourself warped back to the beginning of the level. Wallace can get stuck in a couple places too, which could get downright infuriating if you can't figure out a way to retrieve him.
I wanted to like Project Zoo. And, at times, I did enjoy watching a cutscene or finding a neat background animation or in-joke. Playing the actual game though wasn't very enjoyable at all, and isn't something I'd recommend for anyone but the biggest Wallace & Gromit fans.