Movie to game transitions face enough obstacles without attempting to replicate cinematic greatness. Most games based on films are tied to mediocre films, and unfortunately live up to the blandness of the film without most gamers caring. Unfortunately, THQ's latest offering has to live up to a Pixar film, which happens to be one the best-reviewed movie of the year. It sets the bar high for a game that just is not up to the task of matching even a decent film.
The game follows the story of the film, with the last remaining bit of 'life' on Earth being a clean-up robot and his cockroach buddy. The game fails miserably at delivering Wall-E's adorable personality, his loneliness, or the fact that he is a hopeless romantic. The first level of the game puts gamers in control of Wall-E in what makes the situation feel as though he is cleaning up a dusty junkyard than surrounded by towering trash towers. Controlling Wall-E around Earth is about as boring as you would imagine the real task of cleaning up an abandoned planet. You move around hills of trash and make square garbage cubes to throw at items to set off switches to clear obstacles.
Along the way, you find tube-shaped repair parts for vending machines, which inexplicably just spit out garbage for Wall-E to turn into cubes. The regular garbage piles you find give you standard cubes to throw, but there is some variety in your trash-collecting tasks. There are three different types of garbage-dispensing vending machines in the game, each giving you the exact type of garbage to cube and solve the puzzle immediately in front of you. The vending machines with weights over them give you heavier cubes, which will help weigh down a switch but cannot be thrown very far. It is a tedious task with no thought involved, since the game never gives you multiple machines in an area or different ways to open a switch. The first level might be the longest half-hour of gaming you will experience.
The good news is that Wall-E handles just about how you imagine him. When cruising along at higher speeds, his cornering ability makes him fun to control. The game does have some simplistic platforming elements, typically involving making a few jumps and avoid the occasional incoming object, and he tackles them as good as expected given the awkward camera. Wall-E and the camera seem to run at different speeds, with the camera frequently lagging behind enough to force you into manually toying with it every few seconds. You will also feel the need to spin the camera around at most of the jumping elements, thanks to some strange angles that fail to show you the distance you need to reach.
While Wall-E handles most of the platforming portions of the game well enough, it is the battle side of things that trips him up. While his tank-like tracks would seem to indicate an ability to strafe, the tracks only face forward at all times. As a result, the strafe and fire method of shooting gameplay is nonexistent here. Making matters worse, Wall-E will only shoot what is directly in front of him. This leads to a great deal of spinning around in circles and trying to fire off a decent shot at moving targets out to disassemble him on Axiom. The spinning around and shooting are bad enough, but the awkward camera system makes it more of a headache than you would expect from a title aimed at younger gamers.
The second level introduces, love interest, Eve. While she is much more mobile than her grounded counterpart, flying through the sky, Eve actually handles rather clunky. While Wall-E is a rather peaceful robot, Eve comes equipped with a blaster weapon that she can shoot. As a result, there is an ever-present sight on screen, which is how you direct her flying. Since the controls are oversensitive and twitchy, it makes shooting or flying smoothly nearly impossible. What should be a liberating experience turns frustrating, since Eve loses power quickly if she touches the ground.
The first two levels of the nine-level game are lifeless, solitary experiences, showing off Wall-E and Eve's abilities respectively. They feel more like tutorials than levels, as there is really too little to actually 'do'. Collectable items too spread out to care about and the lack of enemies or danger turning the game into the kind of experience you could not imagine anyone enjoying. Just as most will be ready to turn it off and return the rental, the third level is where it starts to take off.
When Wall-E and Eve finally meet, the game adds a co-op element similar to the relationship between Sonic and Tails. With Eve's ability to pick up Wall-E for extended jumps, and his ability to throw cubes to clear paths, the game starts to become tolerable. Then, just as things are looking up, they separate and the game forces you to toil along alone again. Unfortunately, the promise shown in the third level never delivers. Only two of the levels actually feature the enjoyable co-operative gameplay. While the game does spice up some once you board the Axiom, the levels are far too repetitive. Every mission feels the same, just altering control from one robot to the next. Wall-E is in a constant 'flip the switch, move on, flip another switch' mode, and Eve is repeatedly zipping through tunnels for no reason or blasting a handful of baddies in each new area before moving on.
Despite all it does wrong, the game's biggest problem is that it does a terrible job at conveying the fantastic story of the film. The game only hints at what is happening for those who have seen the film while delivering a few major spoilers, including the ending, for those that have not. The levels themselves feel separate from the story, with the exception of the portion of the final level set on the tilted ship, dealing with its passengers. Everything feels like filler for a story they forgot to tell, to the point that one level literally dissolves into a smattering of goofy mini-games for Eve to complete.
Graphically, the game is passable at best. While it can obviously not complete with the fantastic visuals of the film while in-game, the lack of cut-scenes pulled from the film itself is disappointing. Instead, the developers deliver chunky-looking renders of the films characters in stale environments for the cut-scenes. As for the in-game graphics, the main characters look close enough to the real thing to get by, but it is nowhere near the quality of the film, or what is capable on the system at this point. The faster flying sequences with Eve also reveal some rendering issues with the game, as the game cannot quite keep up. It makes for some avoidable crashes when in the tunnel levels, as some larger items appear about a second before you smash into them.
The rendering is most apparent in Eve's levels, but it also plagues the Wall-E portions of the game. Many times, you will cruise into a room and notice a busted vending machine and no part in sight. It tricks experienced gamers into thinking there is a challenge ahead, but moving around the room a little longer will finally give the part the time the game needs to render it right in front of you. It makes the levels a bore to go through, as you are sitting and waiting in new areas to make sure everything has appeared before moving on. The sound in the game is annoyingly repetitive, both in terms of the overplayed theme from the film and the redundant loudspeaker announcements on the ship. They fail to deliver the incredibly cute effects of the robots trying to communicate with each other, with the exception of a few terribly rendered cut-scenes.
Although this is a title aimed at the younger audience, movie-based games are typically a good place to harvest gamerscore. Two seconds into the start of the game, you get an achievement. While achievement whores may hear this and rejoice, it does not set the tone for the game. The achievement system does a solid job of delivering a balance between those easy to reach and those of the controller-throwing variety. While this is essentially a kids title, the achievements for getting through each level unharmed are rough once you get onto the Axiom.
The game will only take most gamers five hours, at most, to complete, but it does offer a little bonus replay value in the way of same-console multiplayer modes. The game offers four different games for two to four gamers to tackle together. There are three adversarial modes, including a robot take on tag and timed keep-away contests, and one co-operative game where gamers work together to add time to a constantly draining timer by throwing blocks. They are all rather basic, but do add some additional worth to item collection in the game, as the various maps for the games are unlocked in the story mode. There are certainly bigger offenders in the 'bad movie-game' pantheon of games, but Wall-E is in the team photo, and has better source material than most to pull from. Gamers just do not expect much of movie-based games anymore, but the lack of story, repetitive gameplay, and nagging camera issues make this one hard to recommend even for the younger gamers.
