The Bogey Man has a slower pace, reminiscent of The Last Resort. Continuing on from the so-so cliffhanger from last episode, Wallace has accidentally proposed to Felicity Flitt, who has accepted and has already called her mother down to receive her blessing. The tongue-tied Wallace's only way out of the marriage is to join the local country club, due to the Flitt family's abhorrence of golf. However, one thing leads to another, and the club presents a littany of further problems for both Wallace and Gromit. The plot is reasonably interesting, but never feels as climactic as a final episode should. The game makes an effort of describing an intriguing dark history of the country club, and an ages-old conflict between the ancestors of Flitt and McBiscuit, but none of this is capitalised on to any great extent in the actual events of the game.
Gromit, this is a solo sneaking mission.
We're once again down to the usual 'three act' structure, with three very clearly presented chapters and a final 'action' set piece. The difficulty ramp is shorter than earlier episodes in the series, which means that only the first chapter is exceedingly easy, with following puzzles being a bit more taxing on the brain. You'll definitely be stuck at a few points in this episode, although sometimes it's more because you haven't tried every item in your inventory on every item in the environment, rather than using logic. There are a couple of instances where the solution to a puzzle kind of goes against what you have learned, in the annoying way.
However, there are some much better puzzles that deserve credit, that do make logical sense. We don't want to spoil this puzzle, so we'll have to be vague, but there's one that presents itself as one kind of problem, but in fact has an entirely different solution that requires logic, experimentation and planning. Another highlight of the game is its final act, which like most of the Wallace & Gromit games, is something of an action setpiece. It was nice to have an exciting moment to finish off both the episode and the series.
As we said, the game is reminiscent of The Last Resort in its slower pace, which isn't a great thing, although the episode is still only about three to four hours long. The best way to describe the pacing, perhaps, is to imagine that just after you've been presented with an interesting and amusing cutscene, you're left to wander, with the traditional British brass playing in the background as you examine a garden gnome or a cup of tea, you feel your eyes start to glaze over as the proceedings become a little, well, dull. It also doesn't help that there aren't a lot of new environments to explore. There's the clubhouse and one room in the sewer, but those aside the game actually takes away from the number of locations you can explore by reducing Wallace and Gromit's house to just a single room and a front yard. As for new characters, there's only Felicity's mother, who has a relatively minor role in the proceedings. That said, most of the established recurring characters are present and accounted for, even Monty Muzzle, although he's reduced to just being mildly creepy behind bars in prison.
Madness? This is West Wallaby St!
As is the usual, The Bogey Man looks, sounds and feels like it is very much a part of the Wallace & Gromit universe. The voicework is again top quality, with nary a weak link in the performance chain, and the music is well-suited to the atmosphere of the game, that is to say it's low-key but well-orchestrated. Unfortunately, there are a few glitches that appear in this episode that have not been present in previous games, such as 'fault lines' appearing in character models, and the camera sometimes choosing to focus on an unimportant piece of scenery, instead of the action which is taking place.
The Bogey Man is a perfectly decent and enjoyable final journey for Wallace and Gromit. It doesn't do anything exceptionally daring or different, but thanks to a few choice puzzles and exciting moments, it avoids being too stuffy and stolid. Now that the series is completed, Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures have certainly proven to be the most British adventure game series we've played, with a scattering of marvelously and ridiculously adventurous moments among a slower-paced, more laid back affair. We wouldn't rate it above, say, Sam & Max Season Two or Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, but for fans of Nick Park's animated creations, they're as an authentic a videogame experience as you'll ever find, and you may just have a fair amount of laughs along the way.
Loading...
