Academy Award-winning clay animated duo, Wallace and Gromit, are starring in a series of episodic point and click adventures from TellTale Games, makers of the Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island titles. The fourth and final 3-6 hour long episode, The Bogey Man!, can be downloaded on your PC (visit TellTale’s Web site), and it’ll also be available on Xbox Live later on.

Wallace has been invited to join Prickly Thicket, an exclusive golf country club. But once in, he discovers a dark secret that could disrupt the whole West Wallaby neighborhood and lifestyle! It’s up to Wallace and his trusty caddy canine Gromit to solve the mystery and save the day!

For those not in the know, Wallace is an inventor of crazy Rube Goldberg machines that don’t always work the way he intended, and Gromit is his silent but devoted dog, who is the more intelligent of the two.

In the game you control both Wallace and Gromit separately in typical point and click adventure fashion. Use the mouse to point on objects and use items in your inventory to solve puzzles. The animation and ‘feel’ of the game is top notch. The characters even have fingerprints and sculpting tool marks, just like their clay counterparts. If this weren’t a video game, it would probably be up for an Academy Award for best animated short film.

There are really only two nitpicky problems that I can pinpoint with this game. First of all, TellTale didn’t get the original voice actor (Peter Sallis) for Wallace in these adventures. But the new voice actor did a pretty bang-up job imitating Peter Sallis’ tone, especially in this last episode. I especially liked his groaning reactions when Gromit would have him read a joke from the Golf Joke Book! It’s only a shame that the other Wallace and Gromit video games in the past were able to get Peter Sallis, but not this one.

Another problem is that in most point and click adventures, you use the mouse to move and click on objects. But in Wallace and Gromit, you walk around with the WASD or arrow keys. You still view and pick up objects with the mouse, though. It would’ve been nice if you could have controlled the whole game with the mouse, but they had to do it this way since the game will also eventually be on the Xbox 360 console and played with a controller. Really, moving around with the arrow keys didn’t bother me at all, personally, but it might bug others.

But again, these problems are fairly minor. Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures is another great point and click adventure from TellTale, with fun yet not too frustrating puzzles that’ll make you feel like part of the story. If you’ve got a PC or an Xbox 360, you’ll definitely want to download these games, especially if you’re a fan of point and click adventures and/or Wallace and Gromit

Kid Factor:
The Bogey Man! is rated E for Everyone. One character does say “damnation” at one point, but that only barely counts as mild language. Aside from some cartoony antics, Wallace and Gromit’s adventures are definitely the most family friendly game series TellTale has made to date. The puzzles are pretty intuitive, so even young players should be able to make it through the game with little help. But this is one game that’s great to play WITH your kids and family, as an extra set of eyes to help spot items and clues is always helpful for these kinds of games. And it gets the kids’ minds moving, too. Highly recommended.

Tags: Game Reviews