Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled
Score: 92% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Telltale Games Developer: Telltale Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled brings the inventor and his dog back for yet another mini-adventure on Wallaby Lane. This time, a recent destruction of the dog pound has left strays running amok and the town rallying around an upcoming fair as a means to raise funds for the new shelter. Like the first two games, the game's ability to reproduce the TV series' look and feel is spot on. Old characters like Wallace, Gromit, the Major or Winnie look and sound just as good as they always have. Meanwhile, new characters, like the three stray dogs that hound Wallace in the beginning but saving them becomes Gromit's mission before the game is over, capture the series' same unique claymation style. And of course, along with the license's unique look comes the voices of the main characters which sound just like they should. Okay, so Gromit doesn't speak, but Wallace and the secondary characters all sound right.
Gameplay: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled's little crisis features the raising of funds to rebuild the dog shelter. Wallace's newest invention is an ice-cream truck that can scan in anything and make an appropriate ice-cream flavor for it (which is handy when you need to make some fish-flavored ice-cream in the middle of the game). But, when a trio of freed strays wander into Wallace's basement and do some damage to his invention, Gromit's first job becomes calming down the scared pooches and getting the pieces back on the truck. Like the other games in the series, that's just the preamble. Wallace and Gromit soon meet the proprietor of the upcoming fair, a sleazy businessman named Montgomery Muzzle who only seems interested in the money. When they get to the fair, they discover the three stray dogs might be in a spot of trouble. So, of course, Wallace and (mostly) Gromit not only have to play a good bit of fair games to help the townspeople, but also figure out the mystery behind the missing strays and find out exactly what Muzzle is up to.
Difficulty: While the story of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled felt a bit shorter than previous episodes, I did find a few of the puzzles presented in this game a bit more challenging than previous adventures. That being said, I found the slight increase in difficulty to simply add to the overall enjoyment of the game. I never found a point where I got frustrated and had to resort to a walkthrough simply to progress (which always makes me feel like a bit of a failure in these games), but the challenges weren't so easy that I was bored. Muzzled clocked in at about an hour and a half for me, so like the rest of the episodic-adventure games that Telltale puts out, don't expect this adventure to be a long and drawn out adventure. Of course, your mileage will vary depending on your experience with adventure games, but I'm assuming if your considering getting this third episode in the series, then you've played at least two other adventure games (the previous episodes, of course). So if you were able to run through the first games from start to finish, then you shouldn't have too many problems getting past Episode 3.
Game Mechanics: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled sticks to the WASD movement scheme of the first two games in the series, and while I've gotten used to it, the switch from point-and-click to this is always a bit jarring when I load up a new Wallace & Gromit adventure. But I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the number of point-and-clicks I play between W&G releases (which is higher than average). The WASD keys (or Direction keys, if you want) are used to move Wallace or Gromit around in the 3D world. The Shift key brings up your inventory, and your mouse-hand is left clicking only on inventory items or items in the world to interact with. Like I said, this doesn't take long to get used to. It's different than most adventure titles, but for some reason, it works for Wallace & Gromit, but it doesn't feel right in other games (like the recently released Casebook: Episode II: The Watcher). Put simply, if you've already been following the Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures series, then you won't be disappointed in this one. If on the other hand, you haven't played any of the games yet, then you should definitely give the series a try (provided you are a fan of either adventure games or these two characters). While the games are very episodic and don't require knowledge of the previous adventures to know what is going on (which might change in the next game considering how this one ends), it's still best to start this series from the first game two episodes back, just so you can revel in all the goodness that is Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP / Vista, 2.0 GHz Processor or better (3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent recommended), 512MB RAM (1GB recommended), 310MB Hard Drive Space, 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB recommended), DirectX 8.1 sound device, DirectX Version 9.1 or better   Test System: Windows Vista Ultimate, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz, 4 GB Ram, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
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