Its Grand Theft Gromit: Curse of Wallace’s Mansion and it’s a lot of fun!

When presented with a game based on a film, I, like most people immediately cringe at the thought of how horrible and half-assed the game will likely be. My expectations drop to their lowest levels and I prepare to be highly disappointed. Time and time again, film properties that could make incredibly good games if the development teams were given proper development time and resources end up as complete failures on so many levels. Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, Minority Report, and James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies along with many others come to mind as movie-based games that could have been great. With that being said, upon sitting down with Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit my expectations were low to say the least, and fortunately this game has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.

Story:

Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit is based on the recently released box-office success by the same name. Curse of the Were-Rabbit finds Wallace and Gromit’s humane pest control company, Anti-Pesto, being hired by the people of West Wallaby to rid their town of its fury pest invasion threatening their prize vegetables for the upcoming Giant Vegetable Competition. As the pest problem escalates, Wallace hatches what he believes to be a brilliant idea to rid the pests of their vegetable addiction: brainwashing them to hate vegetables using his Mind-o-Mastic invention. While in the process of brainwashing the pests, Wallace’s plan backfires as his machine reverses the brainwashing onto him resulting in an unexpected outcome. Since this is the main premise of both the film and the game, I will not go into any future detail about this aspect of the story.

At any rate, Wallace and Gromit have their work cut out for them as they wander the streets by day eliminating the pest problem, and by night to eliminate the Were-Pest problem. The story is simple, yet given life and helped along by the memorable inhabitants of West Wallaby that Wallace and Gromit will encounter during their adventure. That, and a good amount of witty British humor will have both children and adults entertained.

Gameplay:

Curse of the Were-Rabbit’s gameplay is one of the areas where this game shines. Instead of taking the route most animated film-based games take by presenting gamers with yet another paint-by-numbers Mario 64 clone, Frontier Development has created a very engaging and immersive Wallace & Gromit experience. Heavily borrowing elements from other successful games, Curse of the Were-Rabbit presents a Grand Theft Auto style free-roaming representation of West Wallaby. After the first few initial missions which setup the story, players will be able to travel throughout West Wallaby taking on various missions from the townspeople, ultimately pushing the player through the story. Once enough missions have been completed, players will be granted access to more and more areas of West Wallaby, again similar to unlocking the various districts in the cities of GTA. Unfortunately, like GTA, there are many instances where the player will be unsure of where to go or what to do next. This often seems to be a problem with the GTA formula of play, which this game unfortunately does not improve upon.

The missions available to Wallace and Gromit are diverse enough to keep players entertained, however some types of missions are repeated a bit too often. These missions usually involve clearing a given area of a set amount of pests within a time limit. While this type of mission is fun a few times, after a while they become more tedious and annoying than fun.Fortunately, there are many other types of missions to make up for this. Some of these missions include melee-style battles against waves of Were-Animals, locating items for people, escort missions, and more.

On top of the large variety of missions, the developer has also included a handful of mini-games into the mix. My personal favorite mini-game has to be the erotic rabbit dance. Yes, you read that right. The erotic rabbit dance puts the player in control of a giant stuffed rabbit mounted atop the Anti-Pesto. The player must perfectly perform dance moves with the rabbit to gain access past containment barriers established throughout the town. This particular mini-game is handled in a Dance-Dance Revolution format in which the player must press the buttons corresponding to what is being shown on the screen. It is missions and humor like this which help to make Curse of the Were-Rabbit a diverse and enjoyable experience.

Not content with only borrowing from Grand Theft Auto, the developers have also borrowed heavily from Nintendo’s Luigi’s Mansion. Both Wallace and Gromit have been equipped with Bunguns as their weapon of choice. These Bunguns work to suck up pests and objects to clear areas or to launch back objects to eliminate enemies. As players progress through the game they will earn upgrades to for their Bunguns, allowing them to accomplish more advanced tasks. Throughout the game, gameplay will mostly revolve around the use of these guns to suck up pest, fight Were-Animals, and complete puzzles. This is very reminiscent of the gameplay found in Luigi’s Mansion and it works well for Wallace and Gromit.

Like many other duo-based games, such as Banjo-Kazooie, players can swap between Wallace and Gromit at anytime. With the push of one button players may swap control to another character and back again. Players must learn to use both characters as they each have their own strengths and weakness which must be used to complete various missions and tasks. This is a great addition to the game which works to add more depth and complexity to the overall experience.