We’ve all seen our fair share of Pixar films, some receive more popularity than others and I’m sure you’ve all soon good old ‘Toy Story’ and maybe even ‘A Bugs Life’. Since Disney acquired Pixar we’ve still seen a good stream of Pixar movies over the years. The latest of the Pixar movies however is of a small garbage disposal robot called WALL-E and his adventures on an 800 years in the future version of Earth, and even beyond. It sounds like another excuse for a wacky Pixar story, but what is a Pixar animated film without its movie based game?

Gameplay:

WALL-E the video game is a title like almost every other movie based game, and that is it follows the main elements of the story from the movie, but it uses the environments and situations in the movie for its gameplay experience. That means you won’t be experiencing every moment of the movie in this game, instead, you’ll be taking part in the activities the developers have created for you to progress to the next part of the story. The genre of WALL-E is very much a casual platformer type title, or a platform/adventure title, for comparison, it plays like an easier and ‘lighter’ version of Crash Bandicoot. Most levels consist of having you follow a linear route, accomplishing minor environmental puzzles and courses, such as jumping to different platforms while dodging windswept cars, or revolving platforms allowing you to rescue small robots from futuristic cargo containers. The puzzles aren’t really puzzles as the game never really gets you to stop and think, it either holds your hand or it’s all very self explanatory. I didn’t think the developers wanted the fans of the film to be stuck, they just wanted them to experience a fun interactive version of the film. The controls are also relatively easy to pick up, there’s no real set controls as you jump between two characters, WALL-E and EVE, but most of the time you’ll be controlling WALL-E. He has the ability to leap into a cube using the ‘A’ button, holding ‘A’ will keep you contained as a cube and then you can roll about. This becomes useful in later obstacles. WALL-E can pick up garbage compressed cubes by pressing ‘B’, he can pick up to three cubes at a time and he uses these to attack enemies or surpass certain areas, depending on the cube type. And they’re your main controls, just two action buttons. You can also manually aim, but that isn’t a necessity for playing. So the controls are extremely basic, next to no learning curve, it’s just how and when you use the actions in the game. You also have EVE, who you end up controlling in a couple of missions into the game, and she takes a different approach to the games style. Not just character wise, but control and ability wise too, mainly, she can fly. The missions you take control as her though aren’t as compelling as the ones with WALL-E, basically because all you’ll be doing is flying about scanning areas or racing through tubes. It’s an inviting idea to have two characters to switch between, but if the missions don’t make the most of each of the characters control style then it loses much of the benefactor. Sadly, this game never really picks up in terms of intensity, so you’ll never really care which character you move around in anyway. The variety of missions do keep the attention span, it’s probably important for a game designer to give the game different environments, different challenges and different characters to take control of as the audience, who mainly consist of children, need to be kept occupied with different tasks. So that also means short and brief cut scenes and more action based missions. This is exactly what WALL-E offers, and although the game isn’t really that appealing to a regular gamer it shouldn’t ever be a game you’ll hate, as it is light hearted and easy to pick up as they come. The mission structures are fairly self explanatory, it won’t ever get too repetitive to play. The mission types do repeat themselves here and there, but they’re so spread out that you won’t even be bothered. Maybe the fact the game is so short itself helped the fact that it never got annoying. Once you complete the campaign though, there is a nice little multiplayer addition which is quite rare for a movie based title. The multiplayer has its own full menu; there are co-op scenarios, head to head for two players and head to head for up to four players. And they’re not all simple deathmatches either, there’s a ‘keep the cube’ mode which is basically challenging the player to hold a cube for as long as possible, the player who holds it the longest wins. It’s like a real straightforward form of the skull game mode in Halo, but it’s sufficient for the younger ones. One of the games major downsides is with the shooting elements which you’ll face about three quarters of the way through the game, it only lasts about two missions but it’s arguably the worst portion of the whole game. The shooting has you just tap ‘RT’ when needed, and all your skills have you do is move left and right. It’s not that exciting, and it’s just tedious if anything because you’ll be forced to manual aim as you can’t move sideways without it. Putting the gameplay to one side, WALL-E also tells a story, and this is a hard one to work out, definitely for someone who hasn’t experienced the film. From what I got from the cinematics, as a lot of the gameplay and tasks you go after has nothing to do with the main storyline, the situation seemed quite simple. Earth had been polluted and evacuated, and WALL-E was the last garbage disposal robot of its kind, he then gets caught up in the curiosity over EVE who was sent down to find plant life, when she returns to the ship she was sent from, WALL-E follows her. The story then escalates with WALL-E looking for EVE and being a part of the recovery of earth. The concept seems simple, but there could have been more. The game tends to focus more upon the relationship with WALL-E and EVE rather than the situation at hand, if that’s the way the game was meant to be then that was fine, but it wasn’t completely clear throughout.

Graphics:

A number of points have to be covered when talking about graphics for a movie based game, as it can be quite controversial. It’s not unusual for a movie based game to be lacking visual effects and depth, here this is very apparent. The first time I started up the game to play you really could tell the engine wasn’t built for graphical beauty, It’s a really gritty, blurry and bland looking game, something a hardcore gamer will definitely frown at but something a younger child wouldn’t give two hoots about, quite simply the developers knew what they needed to do to save money and time in development. HDR lighting, bump mapping and high resolution textures weren’t the first priority on their list, but capturing the heart of the film probably was, and that was achieved fine. It definitely could be identified as a WALL-E game. Graphics aren’t always about the effects and the quality of the engine, it’s the artists job to make the game look attractive too. Thankfully the game was based on a nice looking movie with a variety of environments and settings. You’ll be exploring the now garbage filled planet that is Earth, space and huge futuristic spacecraft, so the developers had stuck to their guns there. Animations are well produced, at least for the cinematics anyway as they’re all in game, many games now use motion capture for next to perfect animations. It was most likely the same for this title as well.

Sound:

Musically WALL-E is much of a master piece, nothing really sticks out like a sore thumb or sounds particularly awful here. The soundtrack is suited and well placed throughout the game, the quality of the music itself is expectedly good to listen to, probably not for casual reasons but for a movie based game, it’s most likely the majority of the soundtrack was made for the movie itself though. You’ll be hearing a mix of fantasy themed up beat soundtracks and musical type tunes, so there will be a variety for the ears. And of course, a game isn’t a good game without good sound effects. Again, there isn’t anything major which is brought to question. Background ambience and music may lack in some missions, but there’s always something going on to fill the void. This game is the type of game where you’ll always be doing something, so it’s not like you’d notice. The voice acting which exists is convincing also, whether they’re the same people as the movie itself that’s uncertain, but the job the replacements have done, if that is so, is more than good enough.

Longevity:

For the regular gamer the campaign or story mode of the game won’t take you long to complete, around five hours for an average gamer. For the casual gamer it may take a little longer, and for the casual gamer it’s probably around the ideal length as well. However, it’s not just as simple as completing the story mode, there are extras as well, e.g. there are ‘E’ item collectibles which if (I think) you collect all of them for each level you unlock an achievement. There are also secret items which give you achievements, and there are other hidden areas and items all of which lead to unlocking a secret level. All of that on top can quite easily push the game up to a seven hour completion. Although the story mode is relatively short, the developers have stuck on a nice little multiplayer addition. This is different for a movie based game as there are a few modes to choose from here. Like mentioned earlier, you have a feature co-op mode, a two player head to head and a four player head to head. They’re all very basic, and they probably won’t last a great deal of time, but for a younger teenager and a friend this is ideal.

Overall:

Another movie based game and another typical outcome, it’s hard to have a hopeful attitude before entering this game into the tray because it’s predictable of what it’s going to be like. Unfortunately, this game was no different and it’s a fairly average experience, nothing of which we haven’t seen before. But like many movie based games, and those more so based upon animated movies, they have a specific audience to aim at. In general the casual audience, but more specifically people who are fans of the movie which is likely in this case to be young teenagers and children. Younger teenagers or children can be seen playing this game for a while, the basic but easy to pick up controls and gameplay activities are perfectly suited. It was also interesting to find out that this game had taken features from other famous titles, Crash Bandicoot came to mind when playing some of the missions, and this should be slightly refreshing for previous platformer fans. So the game isn’t confined to people who like the film, others, even hardcore gamers, may enjoy some aspects of the game, it’s just not a title you will see worthy of its retail price tag and probably not a title you’d come back to once fully completed.