Review: Wallace & Gromit – Episode 3

As you may or may not know, Wallace & Gromit is another episodic title from Telltale Games, creators of such games as Sam & Max as well as the recent Tales of Monkey Island.
But is this game worth the price of cheese or should it go for walkies?

Much like the previous entries in the series, Episode 3: Muzzled doesn’t continue the story in a massive arc, but each episode stands alone. Muzzled’s story begins with the duo creating a new machine to create any flavoured ice cream, with the intent of selling it at the local fair which is to help build a new animal shelter that was recently destroyed.

Shortly after the opening, the mini adventure begins with three stray dogs from the former animal shelter taking off with several items from the ice cream truck, leaving Gromit to figure out how to retrieve them and get the truck up and running in time for the fair. Of course this is where a nice guy steps in; Monty Muzzle is a professional fund-raiser, who promises to raise a large amount of cash for any charitable project and so he strolls into town and organises a fair, complete with rides, games and contests, for the new animal shelter.

However Gromit is immediately suspicious, and soon begins to find odd notes scattered around that appear to be from the dogs that Monty Muzzle took with him. These notes are asking for help, but will need to be pieced together for the entire message through a variety of puzzles.

All puzzles are inventory based, in that Gromit or Wallace will either find items, or figure out some way to gain them from the characters in the game. The solutions to the puzzles are fairly straightforward in design and while some may require a bit of running back and forth between locations, none are too difficult, plus there is a hint option; the characters themselves will offer hints. This is not to say the puzzles are too easy, just that they are not overly difficult.

The animation style and presentation of the puzzles is similar to Sam & Max, but is still uniquely Wallace & Gromit – the environments and characters are presented like clay, with little finger prints and little bumps, which is not surprising given Aardman’s collaboration with the game designers.
However one thing that is a shame and that is the voice actors, although Gromit is one of the main characters, it’s odd to play a none speaking character and have Wallace do all the talking but the worse bit about this is that Wallace is not voiced by Peter Sallis, instead it’s done by Ben Whitehead, Aardman’s official backup voice actor for the Wallace character… and it just doesn’t feel right, he has the right characteristics of Peter Sallis but just something is a bit iffy.
On the plus side though he does a fair job, and the other characters do a pretty good job potraying Aardman’s style for accentric characters.

Although the game is quite short, it is more than worth it for any fan of Wallace & Gromit or just good Point & Click adventure titles, although the series doesn’t bring anything new to the genre it is quite enjoyable and a solid game.

3/5