The game attempts to make up for several hours of bland item searching by piling on the action in the final chapter of the game. The final chapter begins with an onslaught of goblin baddies unlike anything you have seen previously. Most times in the game, you run into one or two at a time. In their final siege on the house, you will have a handful in a room at a time, as you attempt to keep all the members of your family alive long enough for your mother to set a trap. Even in this dire situation, the easy-to-beat goblins pose little danger so long as you keep an eye on each family member's health meter, and protect him or her as needed.
After defeating the swarm of goblins, the game suddenly changes once more to conjure up memories of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. The game becomes so strict about what you need to do, and when you need to do it, that you are likely to die more times in the final section of the game than all the rest of the game combined. The terrible camera angles and frustratingly tight time frames make for a difficult conclusion to an otherwise annoyingly easy game. Once finished, the game provides a terribly anti-climactic conclusion, before offering an additional chapter of play to complete any unfinished side quests. It is unlikely that any gamer in their right mind would have made it this far, let alone want to play beyond the ending.
The game does offer an additional multiplayer mode, though limiting your competition to someone on the same console; with no Live support. The multiplayer mode is a minigame that allows you to race against the clock and your opponent to capture sprites before they can. It is as dry and uneventful as the rest of the game, making the lack of Live play feel like a blessing.
The game's voice acting features the actors from the film, though the delivery is rather dry throughout; which could be as much the fault of the cheesy dialogue as it is the actors' delivery. The most annoying of the characters is your 'Brownie' friend, Thimbletack, who talks as though a terrible imitation of a Dr. Seuss book. Sadly, you are tasked with talking to the miniature rat-man quite a bit, forcing you to endure some ear-grating rhyme-speak. Graphically, the game falls well short of what the console can do at this point; actually falling well short of even the first generation titles. The character models seem to move around just fine, but the mutant frog look of the goblins and uninspired backgrounds are a little behind the times.
Most terrible games on the 360 at least offer solace in the form of easily attained Achievement Points, but Spiderwick is no such game. Beating the final boss offers no 'beat the game' bonus achievement; saving the big prize for those that put in the time to complete all side quests. Fighting through the boredom will only net you around three-hundred points; hardly a fair reward to balance out all the game does wrong.
The Spiderwick Chronicles continues the terrible trend of bad movie adaptations. At some point, you have to wonder if the silver screen and videogame consoles are as diametrically opposed as oil and water.
