Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures: Muzzled! Review

The third episode in a four part series, Telltale Games’ Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures: Muzzled! is a welcome departure from the saturated market of testosterone fueled action packed games.

Forcing players to use their brains (a scary thought for some), players must guide either Wallace or Gromit (most of the times Gromit) through a multitude of puzzles in order to solve the greater mystery surrounding West Wallaby Street.

System requirements
The system requirements for this game are as follows:

* Operating system: Windows XP / Vista
* Processor: 2.0 GHz or better (3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent recommended)
* Memory: 512MB (1GB recommended)
* Hard disk space: 310MB
* Video: 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB recommended)
* Sound: DirectX 8.1 sound device
* DirectX: Version 9.0c or better

I played on a system with 2.4 GHz and 1 gig of RAM perfectly fine.

Release Date

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Storyline

As someone who tends to enjoy the aforementioned mindless action packed games, the story was surprisingly engaging. The whole corrupt and deceiving businessman plot is undoubtedly tired out, but the developers at Telltale Games did a good job of infusing humor and intrigue into the game, giving players enough interest to unravel the plot.

The story, as usual, begins in the basement of Wallace and Gromit’s house on West Wallaby Street. Unfortunately for the heroic duo, the town has been troubled by an increasingly uncontrollable pack of stray dogs, and this problem is only made worse by the fact that the town’s pound had been recently destroyed.

Enter Monty Muzzle, a self-proclaimed philosopher, business entrepreneur, and philanthropist, who has a plan to save the town from their misery - a fund raising fair. His proposed plan to construct an entirely new pound from the revenue generated by the fair, sponsored by no other than himself, has all the townspeople buzzing with excitement. This brilliant idea, in addition to his savvy character and charm, has made Muzzle a popular sensation amongst all the folk, even Wallace.

Gromit, who is easily the smarter of the two, is not quite ready to fully trust Muzzle, and once again, the abnormally intelligent and skeptical mutt takes it upon himself to go on an investigative journey that would leave Chris Hansen red with embarrassment. Unsurprisingly to Gromit, Muzzle’s operation is not as magnanimous as it seems, and it’s all up him and Wallace to save the town from further misfortune.

Gameplay

Just as in the previous two versions, the third Wallace and Gromit episode is another mystery solving quest. Players will generally have to interact with all the NPCs and inspect any object possible in order to obtain all the clues necessary to progress through the game. While this sounds like a nuisance, it’s really not all that bad.

The dialogue is entertaining and often times good enough for a few laughs. Plus, British accents are awesome.

Some puzzles though, were more trouble than they’re worth. This could have been due to my own ineptitude, but some connections were difficult to make.

Players do not have to travel back and forth different scenes, making the storyline very fluid.

The game took me around 3-4 hours to complete, which for my sake, is hopefully the average time for most people. Now before you get scared, remember that the game only costs $8.95 and is only an episode within a series.

The controls are easy to pick up and the learning curve is essentially non-existent. On a PC (the game is also out for the Xbox 360) actions and movements are controlled by the click of a mouse and the standard WASD keys on a keyboard.

These overly simple controls, however, almost transforms the player into a viewer of a playable movie in which you simply click your way to the next scene.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, the game is no Crysis, but it stays true to the unique clay-like style of the Wallace & Gromit franchise, which fans should enjoy.

Furthermore, the sound does a nice job of adding to the quirky and festive atmosphere exuded by the game.

Style-wise, these are easily some of the the strongest points in the game.

Final personal opinions

Overall, the developers did a good job of developing a game that would engage both kids and adults. Fans of the series will definitely approve of this newest episode. There are new tools to laugh or be confused at, and the puzzles will cause you to think.

The story is quite simple but fantastic, and the game’s presentation is unique to most games. Unfortunately, the overly simple controls prevent this title from being somewhat flawless.

However, at only $8.95, the game offers more entertainment than one would think.