Dawdling adventure
“What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?”That’s the question posed by Disney Pixar in its new blockbuster movie and subsequent videogame tie-in, WALL-E. The answer lies with the main character, a ‘Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class’ unit who trades in his daily job, working for Buy n Large Corporation as a rubbish collector, for an inevitable earth-saving action adventure.
Whilst the movie has received plenty of praise from critics (see HEXUS.Lifestyle’s WALL-E movie review ) for its terrific visuals and heart-wrenching storyline, the game fails to provide the same entertainment due to its repetitive, predictable and pedestrian gameplay.
Whilst the cut-scenes are entertaining enough and offer you a glimpse at the artistry that’s so widely spread throughout in the film, the environments and level design are colourless in comparison and the cute and charismatic robot that you’ll see on the big screen is replaced with a lifeless and dull character that trundles clumsily around the desolate worlds picking up litter and tossing it around in order to solve puzzles. Unlike the film, it’s difficult to feel empathy toward WALL-E, or develop the same emotion that the love story evokes as you watch his relationship develop with female probe, EVE, in the movie.
Taking place from the third-person perspective, WALL-E is a platform game where you control the mechanical character as he embarks on a journey across 10 recognisable worlds from the film, solving puzzles and searching for hidden collectibles.
The main gameplay mechanic involves garbage, coincidently the one word that sums up the whole of my WALL-E experience..
