Wallace and Gromit in Project Zoo

Written by Tony Kennetz  on December 03, 2003

Full Review: If you read my preview, you know how I promised to track down the development team if they screwed this upЕ

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I am currently on the verge of tears. I had many a high hope for Wallace and Gromit's video game debut. This claymation series straight out of England seemed prime for a conversion to the platforming genre, but it would appear that BAM and developer Frontier Designs either didn't think so or just didn't want to make it work, because this game is nothing more than average, with more than a few stolen gameplay mechanics that were done better originally anyways.

The story of Project Zoo is rather straight forward, featuring Wallace and his pet dog and (possibly slightly more intelligent) friend Gromit fighting the evil Penguin genius Feathers, whose undeniable thirst for diamonds have led him to take the animals in the zoo hostage and force them to create the precious stones. Having adopted a bear there, that's all the motivation the duo needs. Entering the now highly guarded zoo via a Trojan penguin, the melee begins, and unfortunately, so does the mediocrity.

Wallace and Gromit's main gameplay consists of several platforming stereotypes, the basic jumping levels, maybe some enemies to kill every now and again, and a lot of item collecting. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Not surprising, I got the feeling every time I played the game that I was playing nothing more than a stripped down Ratchet and Clank clone, which reminds me, this game does have some fairly unique weapons, at least in theory. The thing about those weapons is that while they seem to have strange ideas behind them, they don't do anything that hasn't been seen before. Don't let this false creativity fool you, the only creativity behind these weapons is their names. Level design also follows this suit, which is unfortunate given the unlimited amount of ideas this license, one would assume, handed to the developers.

The controls are also rather shoddy, I often found myself running from one end of the room, getting half way to were I wanted to be, only to be turned around by the goofy camera angles. When those controls and that camera get paired together, the jumping and general platforming that is expected to defeat this game becomes frustrating, and that's just not the type of (artificial) difficulty you want to find in a game. Then you have your human, NPC Wallace, who will frequently get stuck in corners and generally be a nuisance. By the end of the game I would've been more than willing to sacrifice the weapons he made for more level designs that didn't involve his assistance.

The audio in Wallace and Gromit isn't going to win any awards, but if you are familiar with the real McCoy series of short films, then it's likely you're going to appreciate the attendance of the real voice actor for Wallace in this game. That said, his dialogue has a tendancy to repeat itself, and the music is little more than average. When I started to come to my senses, I realized there were only a couple things in W&G that could honestly be thankful for, and those were the preservation of the graphic styling and the slick extras.

ЕUnfortunately, those aren't enough to save this game either. Although at least they do manage to preserve some authenticity of the series, the graphics still manage to slow down at times and the video clips have been unlocked and watched far too quickly.