Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled!
First posted on 16 June 2009. Last updated on 01 March 2013.
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| Muzzled! Who? What? I cannot say. |
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| Gromit finds reading the newspaper to be more interesting than listening to his master. |
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| Monty presents himself as a do-gooder and an entrepreneur. |
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| The townies gather at the charity carnival. |
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| Gromit is in "hot air" pursuit of Monty. |
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures
The season is comprised of 4 episodes:
- Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees
- Episode 2: The Last Resort
- Episode 3: Muzzled!
- Episode 4: The Bogey Man
Wallace and Gromit have returned yet again for another cracking adventure. In Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled! (also known as Wallace & Gromit in Muzzled!), Telltale Games continues its collaboration with Nick Park and Aardman Animations to bring the characters of Wallace & Gromit to life—digitally speaking, of course.
This time, strange dogs are lurking in Wallace and Gromit's neighborhood, after the destruction of a local dog shelter. The newspaper tells stories of a trio of whippets ravaging in the town center—and guess what? They have all invaded Wallace's house! The first whippet (with an affinity for everything and anything that glitters like gold) steals from Wallace; the second whippet digs through his garden; the third whippet seems oddly nervous and even a bit afraid. Felicity Flitt, Wallace's neighbor, is not happy at all that her flowerbed is also ruined. Why are these dogs plaguing the town? How can they be stopped?
Meanwhile, Wallace is busy working on his newest invention, the Infiniflavour Ice Cream Maker, that can create ice cream of any flavor by just scanning the desirable sample. Obviously, the canine invasion is wracking havoc on the development of his precious ice cream wagon. The dogs keep stealing parts, disrupting the wagon's construction. Gromit needs to find a way to take care of them and help to save his master's business.
Elsewhere, a man named Monty Muzzle is arranging a charity carnival to raise funds to rebuild the shelter for the homeless dogs. He is all too happy to take care of Wallace's uninvited guests. Wallace tells Monty about his new invention, and Monty immediately invites Wallace to bring his ice cream wagon to the carnival to help with the fundraising. Monty even talks about franchising Wallace's ice cream business, perhaps finally bringing an end to Wallace's financial trouble.
Any astute gamer will immediately spot Monty as a fraud. Wallace, however, is more naïve (naturally), believing that he is working for a good cause. Luckily, Gromit, as the smart dog that he is, is suspicious of Monty and goes to investigate Monty's charity claim as well as Monty's connection with the homeless dogs.
Unsurprisingly, there is little that is new in the production of this episode. It follows pretty much identical in format to previous episodes of the series. Since the series is designed primarily for playing using a gamepad on the consoles (Microsoft Xbox Live Arcade), it is not possible to play the game using only the mouse without the keyboard on the PC. Fortunately, aside from navigation (done via the ASDW or arrow keys), most actions in the game can be accomplished with the mouse. Still, I find it strange that the developer refuses to implement mouse control for character movement.
Otherwise, the game uses a standard point-and-click interface. An inventory item can be selected to combine with an object in the scene just by scrolling through the mouse wheel, and a simple click then triggers the action. The cursor also changes if an object is clickable. Clicking on the Tab key immediately highlights all the hotspots on screen, thus negating any need for pixel hunting. For truly novice gamers, the game even includes an adaptive hint system that can be turned on or off to suit their needs.
Music, sounds, and dialogs are all well done, on par with the high production standard of the series. I am, however, missing the little extra surprise.
Fans of Gromit will especially love this episode more than previous episodes, as most of the game has Gromit (rather than Wallace) as the playable character. Wallace is only playable as a character once, in a rather short chapter near the end of the game. Fans of Wallace & Gromit will know that while Wallace can be rather creative and clever with his inventions, he is also naïve and not very perceptive. This nicely makes way for his more reflective and observant companion Gromit, who can not only perceive the bigger picture of any situation but also foresee the consequences of Wallace's many shortsighted decisions. The only downside of playing as Gromit is that he cannot talk, so the game must rely on other characters around him to speak up and entertain the player.
Much of the game's action in this episode has been moved to a new locale—the carnival. This is a welcome change, as both the Wallace's house and the town center have already been fully explored in previous episodes. Unfortunately, aside from this addition, the episode does not break any new grounds for the series. To be fair, it is difficult (if not impossible) to keep creating innovative content for new episodes that will always surpass previous episodes. As it stands, this episode takes a brief pause but still offers great entertainment for the 2-3 hours that it lasts. With just a single more episode to go, I really hope for a great season finale in Wallace and Gromit's final adventure. After all, even heroes need to take a break from time to time.