Bugs and Workarounds: This game is fun but unacceptably buggy. I hit three game-stopping bugs (one of which required me to exit to the Dashboard), and others reported similar problems on the Telltale Games Technical Support Forums. This leaves me in the unfortunate situation of reviewing a game that has excellent writing, a distinct visual style, and is very enjoyable, but also requires you to go to some lengths to avoid these severe bugs. If you decide you still want the game (it is pretty fun) and have problems, please check the link above for help, and be sure you save often. That said, the review begins.

When I saw this game advertised on the Xbox Dashboard, I had no idea who Wallace & Gromit were or why I should care. A little more research indicated this was a point and click adventure game (think “Maniac Mansion”, “King’s Quest”, etc.) by Telltale Games, a company that generally releases really good games in this genre; they’re the ones behind the current Sam & Max series. That was enough to get me to try it, and I’m mostly glad I did. It turns out that this game is based on a British clay animation series by the same name, with Wallace being an absent-minded inventor and Gromit being his trusty (and more sensible) canine companion. I’d never heard of them before this review, but that’s probably because I’m an uncultured, barbaric American.

The basic gameplay consists of exploring various environments in what appears to be a rural post-World War part of Britain, with the plot presenting various problems in the daily life of the titular Wallace and Gromit. Wallace is a well-intentioned fellow but leans toward ’mad science’, so the plot is pretty heavy on comedy. Regardless of what situation comes up, the game is generally played by moving about the screen and clicking on things of interest; your character will usually end up either taking the item for use in fixing a problem in another area, or speak to the relevant character, or just make some kind of amusing comment. If this sounds similar to other adventure games, it should. Thankfully Wallace & Gromit doesn’t believe in punishing you all that hard for randomly experimenting. That is to say, while a wrong idea may get you mildly set back, it’s theoretically hard to put yourself in a “can’t win” situation or wind up getting killed; it’s a lot more forgiving than the aforementioned King’s Quest.