Telltale's adoption of W&G is very well done, but lacks the wonderful spark of the animated shorts.

User Rating: 7.5 | Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees PC
By Swoosie | Review Date:
As a huge, and long-time, fan of the Wallace and Gromit animated shorts, it's been a wonderful and sometimes bumpy ride. We've seen a few really mediocre W&G games for the PS2, I read with some disbelief about Aardman Studios building burning to the ground. So when Telltale picked up W&G as their newest franchise, I was pretty psyched. I like their Sam & Max series, and was very anxious to see the marriage of these two.

So how is the honeymoon? A mixed bag...

The good:
1. Terrific 3d rendered visuals, smooth animation, well-done background and lots of attention to detail in the environments.
2. Decent voice-acting (though see "the bad" about this, too...)
3. As usual for Telltale's point-n-click adventures, puzzles are a good mix of straightforward, wacky, funny, and intriguing.

The bad:
1. The game LOOKS like Wallace and Gromit, and at times IS W&G. However, with voiceovers by sound-alikes (I guess Peter Sallis was too expensive to book for this much dialog), and writing done by non-Aardman folks, it doesn't really FEEL like W&G.
2. A bit short. (Again, I'm not a huge fan of Telltale's episodic release method, but I am 100% sympathetic at the need for it to facilitate timely releases and reduce budgets).

I wanted to like this game, and I realize there's really no way Telltale could afford to pay all of Aardman's talent to crank out full-tilt W&G. However, as a whole, it falls a little flat. That said, it's worth a play for W&G _and_ point-and-click adventure fans alike -- try the demo.

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