Over the years, game developers have come up with a number of off-beat concepts for a video game. Paperboy, in which players control a newcomer to the world of newspaper delivery in the world’s more disturbed neighborhood is a solid example of an oddball, “never should have worked” title. Wall*E on the other hand is the offbeat concept gone horribly, horribly wrong.
For those who have seen the trailers or the film it’s based on, you’ll be well aware that Wall*E is a robot that collects garbage. That’s the video game in a nutshell. Players traverse a littered Earth collecting trash to throw as various objects to move onto the next section.
The first levels are entirely platform based. Wall*E controls fine, and the camera is mostly where it needs to be. Aside from a few unnecessarily challenging jumps scattered around, moving from place to place is nothing to worry about. Those trying to find the myriad of collectibles will have some work to do.
It’s the sheer boredom of the garbage mechanic that causes Wall*E to crash and burn. Various objects need to be hit with a certain type of garbage to complete a puzzle. The problems are obvious. The first is that the necessary garbage is close by… always. You’ll never have to go out of your way to find a solution, nor do you need to think your way through a puzzle.
Secondly, the different types of garbage offer little differentiating factors. You press B to load it up, and then a trigger to throw it. Sure, certain types have different throwing radiuses, but the goal is always at the right length to make up the change.
Thirdly, the game re-uses the same puzzles repeatedly. It’s monotonous, and by the finale when you’ve seen all of this five, six, or seven times (and even more in some cases), it’s borderline offensive to the players intelligence, even if they’re a small child.
When the shooting finally rolls around hours into the game, the single analog stick flight mechanics (using Wall*E’s companion Eve) feel outdated. Precision aiming requires a full stop, and the auto lock on is too touchy to rely on. Thankfully, most of the AI is non-existent, and if you manage to slowly move into a room, you can shoot all enemies before they’re programmed to react.
Cinematics fail to let the bulk of the story through. Certain missions seem to have no effect on the overall arc, and some are blatantly inserted to extend the length of the game (flying through rings, seriously?). Then again, at only a few hours long, the developers had to do something to make this seem like a reasonable gameplay time. Only a small part of Wall*E’s personality comes through, although a nicely tuned graphics engine makes the gameplay easy on the eyes.
Wall*E is everything that’s wrong with movie licensed games. It’s boring, lacking focus, and well beyond the point of acceptable repetition. Kids might get a small kick out of controlling their new on-screen robot pal, but even the youngest set is going to be awfully tired of garbage collection by the time this one is over.
Final Score: 1/5
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