WALL.E. review (X360)

Far be it for me to point out the flaw in Wall.E’s design. With probably hundreds working on the movie, further hundreds working on the game (maybe), and a tonne of people experiencing the whole lot of it, I’m surprised no-one caught this. So Wall.E is a robot, designed to crush rubbish into cubes, to tidy up the planet. If you’ve seen footage of this in action, he stuffs rubbish into his central unit, and it pops out a cube. Fantastic. Only that’s not really crushing it, is it? If the cubes come out the exact size of the compartment, after being stuffed in there with obvious space, that’s a hideously flawed design.

Let’s just suspend disbelief for now, and get into the game, hoping that the main character’s design isn’t analogous to the overall game design. Rather than spoil anything about the must watch movie, I’ll avoid plot topics, although needless to say, you’ll enjoy everything more if you watch the film before playing the game. The plot follows the same tale as the movie, with glimpses of the soundtrack, and an overall well realised atmosphere. Certain areas are clinical and simplistic while others are dirty and detailed, although it is obvious that it was designed for a multi-platform release, catering for the lowest common denominator with but a few enhancements other than its HD resolution to show off the 360.

The Disney logo on the box

Wall.E is obviously and justifiably aimed at a younger audience. Fresh out of the film, it’s hard not to imagine an excited child not wanting to play through the game, and while some cutesy youth oriented games are worth playing for older gamers, without the game bringing something new and innovative to the genre, they are often not worth a look at. While Wall.E certainly brings new ideas, it is difficult to recommend the game for an adult gamer, which should bear no surprise.

My 360 suffers from plenty of ‘disc inaccessible’ errors, normally trying to load anything from the dashboard, or on heavily streaming games, but Wall.E gave me troubles on the loading screen waiting for the main menu to pop up. I didn’t have any problems once I got to that stage, but the 30 minutes of trying almost made me consider finally replacing the hardware. This shouldn’t affect a normal gamer, but perhaps the fact that despite this loading hiccup, and a lunch break, I had reached the end credits of Wall.E within four and a half hours of it arriving on my doorstep means that you’re not getting a lot of bang for your buck.

A big U BBFC rating

A relatively standard platformer in principle, the game gently leads your through its unique gameplay principles after a satisfactory intro cinematic. Nowhere near the standard of the movie CG, obviously based upon the game engine itself, and using some quite poorly compressed video it won’t really upset the audience it is aimed at, especially since the characters still emote well. The bulk of the game is about crushing cubes and using them to proceed through the linear (not a bad thing for kids) levels. Depending on the materials used, different cubes will have different properties from the heavy cubes weighing down cantilever systems to the charged cubes that power up items if held nearby.

Then you’ll get to control Eve, Wall.E’s flying friend, in a trio of refreshingly open levels. The flying system is intuitive and fun, and gives you a selection of side missions to take part in before you stumble upon the one that progresses the storyline. Then you’ll have a chance to control Wall.E with Eve’s assistance, laser blasting anything you choose. However this sudden shift from puzzler to shooter feels unnecessary, and after you’ve destroyed over 100 of the almost identical sentinel robots, you’ll be glad when you lose the blaster in a later level.

Still showing in cinemas

From such a high profile release, there are plenty of bugs that show themselves throughout the game. The occasional frozen projectile, when you destroy an enemy that has shot at you, the occasional ability to shoot through walls if you’re close enough, resulted in me somehow saving eight out of seven ‘reject bots’. Sometimes enemys that shouldn’t be floating end up stuck in the air, and in general they should have all been caught, despite none of these being showstoppers. Aside from the strange clipping issue in the bonus level which inexplicably bounces cubes back at you at one point.

There are plenty of collectables to busy yourself with, although another hour on top of my completion time had all of them added to my profile. Concept art pages are occasionally scattered around, ‘Wallop’s (the E from Wall.E’s logo) can be found in every level, and collecting 30 of them unlocks a multiplayer map for your later gaming pleasure; thankfully, there are more available in the levels than you need to collect, so you can miss a few and it doesn’t matter. Even new costumes for the characters can be picked up, disappointingly only available in MP modes. As soon as I saw Eve dressed up as an ice cream cone though, I forgave it.

Get your friends around

With lots of easy achievements, (and the odd challenging one) a multiplayer mode is a welcome addition to the length of the game. Local only, the game supports four way split screen, with four distinct MP modes. Your standard deathmatch is tactfully called Laser Tag, and is really nothing to shout about, aside from the giant crushing hammer one hit kill that can be picked up. Cube holder is far more interesting, requiring each Wall.E to find the cube and swipe it from the opponents. A timer ticks down how long you must keep it before being declared the winner.

Then there’s the cooperative mode (really a single room level) that is quite a clever balancing act to try and use your skills to reset clocks that are constantly ticking down with a single cube being thrown over an instant kill zone between your characters that is worth a play but won’t hold your attention enough to warrant their proud announcement of ‘co-op’ support on the box. Finally, Eve Aerial Arena gives you the task of flying through the most rings as the time ticks away. Fly through a ring your opponent has already claimed and you’ll change the ring colour to yours. It doesn’t take a genius to wait for the other player to go of collecting rings and follow them around, swiping them straight after your enemy.

To clean up this review

Wall.E is a short and simple game that is targeted well to the young audience of the movie. It even brings some clever and unique aspects to the game design including two fun sections where you can manually spin platforms around to create the best route. It has obviously been rushed out to coincide with the release of the film however, and the quality obviously suffers, but as a welcome distraction and reliving of the story’s events, it is a decent stab to entertain your kids.

Don’t get it if you’re looking for the next imaginative platformer though. Multiplayer definitely feels like it’s been tacked on for a bit of extra life in the game, but the difficulty of everything will probably suit its target audience. Then again, you could use it to quickly boost your gamerscore if you’re that way inclined. (Why do you think I volunteered to review it?)