Yet another movie tie-in populates your local game store shelves! Even if you have not seen the movie itself there are few of us who will not encounter Wall-E in some shape or form in a local outlet. The movie is superb and rightfully inserts yet another jewel in the crown of Pixar Studios.
The game on the other hand, and by comparison, delivers a healthy fail in almost every area. Wall-E is a cute and adorable character and the game should have both scaled and translated immensely well given its digital origins.
However, from the beginning you mostly witness the unveiling of a catalogue of amateur design and technical development flaws that come incredibly close to beggaring belief.
The 'chase' camera, a system established and perfected decades ago, and in countless other games, is poor and often lodges itself inside game objects, rendering the player blind. The gameplay is simplistic and too often repetitive. Piloting Wall-E around is more of a chore than a game and is continuously hampered by the poor camera work.
The best part of the game is when Wall-E's girlfriend EVE is available to you, as EVE can fly, fire lasers and turn on a dime. In fact the game would benefit greatly from more EVE and less Wall-E!. The question is who wants to tell him?
The game does follow the movie's general adventure reasonably well and they've chucked in some multiplayer modes to add 'value' to the package. Overall Wall-E is very disappointing and suffers from poor production values and direction. Unless this one is specifically requested there are many other kids’ games out there that offer far better value for money and many kids will likely want this one brought back too.
4/10
