Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures

I loved many of the previous Wallace & Gromit films, and Telltale have managed to capture the tone of the original films accurately, without just ripping it off. Their unique charm is still pretty much intact. Unfortunately, Grand Adventures is ubstantially less interesting as an actual game. Telltale put out a ton of adventures around 2007-2010, and they shared a lot of problems that were never improved upon. Overly simplistic puzzles, and remains of unsatisfying "pixel hunting" are both pretty common to see. Most of the time when you're stuck, the solution isn't actually difficult, you've probably just missed finding a random object somewhere. Another bugbear for me is the forced repetition of scenes. You'll occasionally need to try a few things out to figure out a puzzle solution, and there are a lot of unskippable sequences that will play every single time. These are nice the first time through but after the 5th time of seeing the same cutscene you'll wonder why these weren't made skippable. Overall, while these games are worth playing to see Wallace & Gromit again, and they capture the spirit of the originals pretty well, the gameplay isn't strong enough to recommend on its own. Unfortunately Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures can't escape feeling a bit like B-sides.

I bought this when it first was released and I absolutely adored it. Classic point-n-click without the HUD to make it feel as though you're in a W&G episode. Highly recommended for all adventure and point-n-click fans.

A simple but effective and out of the way user interface, amazing voicework, puzzles that can be incredibly frustrating but seem obvious after you've solved them and seamless maneuvering between cutscenes and gameplay adds up to create a game that makes you feel as though you've walked into a Wallace and Gromit short.

This game was from Telltale's pre-walking sim days when they were making really quite good niche point-and-clicks. This is a very cute game that exactly matches the feel of the original animated shorts that it is based on. You alternate playing a "claymation" dog, who is the smarter of the pair, and his human, who he has to constantly rescue from silly situations. Gameplay is very easy point-and-click suitable for children (except for one scene that inexplicably requires both hand-eye-coordination and the navigation of terrible controls--I really did not like that part!). The humor lands well, and the stories are enjoyable. The voice actors are not the main voice actors, but they are "official," being voiced by the official backup actors. I really recommend this one for the cartoon's fans and families that want to game together. It's also fun for humor game fans. If you are a big fan of classic point-and-clicks, it is far easier and simpler than those, so avoid this if you want to be challenged. Note: I don't own this game on GOG (yet?); I have an original disc. I'm very glad to see this available for sale again; I was afraid it was trapped in licensing limbo, and of course, there's the whole Telltale Games dissolution, etc. etc.