Wallace & Gromit in 'The Bogey Man' Review

Wallace is to be wed, and the only way out is to go Pro.

For the first time in Wallace & Gromit history, there was a cliffhanger at the end of last month's story Muzzled. Wallace accidentally got himself engaged to his next-door neighbour Miss Flitt, and she's got dastardly feminine plans to curtail all of Wallace's fun (join the club, mate). However there's a possible way out, as she (and her mother Patricia) absolutely hate golfers.

And so begins Telltale's final (for now) romp through West Wallaby Street. The trouble this time, unfortunately, is that in the intervening month between episodes we've had a little game called Monkey Island pop up. While the two worlds are quite different, Tales of Monkey Island does show up some real problems with Wallace & Gromit that we were mostly willing to forgive before now. While I am very happy Tales came out, perhaps the scheduling could've been a little better.

For example, there's only one new location this time around. While there's quite a lot to do in it, it is basically just one new room and not a whole new area like Episode 3's funfair. Wallace and Gromit's house is actually cut down to just the dining room, the hallway and the garden, then there's just the town centre. No, tell a lie, there's a small sewer area too.

Even compared to previous Telltale games that don't star a certain pirate wannabe, this is a bit tight. The Last Resort and most of the Strong Bad episodes at least had the decency to totally change the revisited locations. Taking into account that this is the last episode, as the end of both Sam & Max and Strong Bad had many large new areas to visit, this is pretty unforgivable and a real let down.


Those green golf courses and the suggestion of weird mini-golf courses (that I may admittedly have imagined)? Not here. I won't spoil it, but the golf here is a bit of a surprise, and feels a little.confined. I don't know why, but the whole game just felt a little claustrophobic to me. I don't know if that's a negative as such, it just felt strange. Even when I was locked up in Monty Muzzle's cell last episode, I didn't have that feeling!

The storyline is a bit mad and if you think about it too hard it'll shatter into a thousand shiny logic pieces, but if you go with the flow it does its job nicely. It's all quite intriguing and I was genuinely interested in seeing how the duo were going to get out of each new mess they found themselves in.

The characters continue to be likeable and are perfectly in-keeping with the Aardman aesthetic. Once again my favourite is the slightly dolally PC Dibbins, who has now acquired an unrelenting hatred of rodents, possibly caused by Wallace's cheese-sniffing chaos-causing robot mouse from the first episode. The only new character is Miss Flitt's mother Patricia, who really could've done with a bit more development and screen time.

Puzzling, the main thrust of the adventure game, is, well. good. Tough, which veteran adventurers who have breezed through all of Telltale's adventures recently will be pleased to hear, but sometimes unfairly so. I don't mind red herring inventory items, but when two items blatantly seem to do something important, I cry foul when they're actually completely useless. And why can a golf club jam open a door but not a giant wrench? Some of the puzzles here though are utterly brilliant, although there's a little bit too much unskippable animation and repeating dialogue when you just want to experiment.


The penultimate puzzle is a nice logic test, which admittedly has a bit too much talking and not enough getting the hell on with it, but is entertaining once you find out how much you have to do to finish it.

However, the final puzzle of the entire season is extraordinarily irritating. You don't have any time to work out what's going on before you're repeatedly thumped in the arse (literally), and when you finally get some breathing room it's just impossible to work out what you have to do because there are loud, screeching voices on a loop.

I had to turn off my speakers before I could think straight, and even then I was completely stuck. One of those red herrings I mentioned earlier completely threw me off, no hints appeared at all despite upping the Hint Bar to maximum, and as I was playing Gromit I didn't get any verbal help either.

Now, I utterly loved playing as Gromit in all four episodes, particularly in Muzzled, because it made a refreshing change to most adventure game characters, who are always far too talkative. However, if Telltale is considering a Grand Adventures Season Two they really have to learn to make Gromit more expressive.

Gromit's a real challenge as he can't just say "that's a good idea, but maybe with a different tool," "it's completely broken, it won't work again," or "no, that pool cue's completely useless, and yes I know it moves like a lever, stop banging on about it Capel." Just shaking his head is his equivalent of the dreaded "that doesn't work" that plagues lesser adventure games.


Finally and perhaps a victim of Telltale's promise to get the game out for July; The Bogey Man seems unfinished. There are bugs and glitches all over the place, none of which had I experienced in previous episodes. Characters have tear-lines across their faces; the camera occasionally focuses on a random location instead of the person talking; Wallace's golf ball remains in its previous location despite having been sunk already; ghostly floating coins etc.

Clicking the 'Preview' button on the Main Menu even caused my game to crash one time, and it was only 'previewing' the series I'd just finished anyway. None of this breaks the game (apart from that last one) and will probably get patched before the Xbox Live version comes out, but it's still disappointing that the final release of such a major licensed game feels rushed.

The Bogey Man is in no way a bad game, but I think it's arguably the weakest episode of the season when it should rightfully be the strongest. The fact that it's the final game in the season and that it comes after the superb Launch of the Screaming Narwhal and Muzzled, makes it all the more disheartening. The inventory also seems fiddly now compared to Monkey Island's, too.

With only four games in the season (compared to the five of most Telltale seasons) I was really hoping all four would be spectacular. They are definitely good Wallace & Gromit stories and fans will be happy with them (I was), but a stronger finale would've made the whole thing much sweeter. Shame.

7/10

Chris Capel