Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees
Available for Xbox 360, PC
Publisher: Xbox LIVE Arcade
Developer: Telltale Games
Release date: 5/27/09
Rated E for Everyone
Official website: TelltaleGames.com

Game summary from Telltale Games:
"Join Wallace & Gromit in Fright of the Bumblebees, the first of four grand adventures! The inventor and his loyal pooch are faced with a big problem. They need 50 gallons of honey by tonight – far more than their bees can handle! When Wallace’s plans to step up production go horribly awry, it falls to Gromit to fight off the angry swarm. Featuring a brand new story with the same slapstick humour, cinematic visuals, and charm fans of the Wallace & Gromit films have come to love, Fright of the Bumblebees kicks off this four-episode series in cracking style!"

Review summary:
The first episode of Wallace and Gromit is a great introduction to the series. The characters, music and puzzle solving are all enjoyable, only slightly blemished by a glitch you may encounter.

4 out of 5 stars

Read the full review below.

Review:

You may have seen Wallace & Gromit's shorts and features from Aardman Animations. Or you may have not. If you haven't seen any of the stop-motion animated shorts or films from Wallace & Gromit, don't let that keep you from playing this game. In fact, it just may be the perfect introduction to Wallace, the inventor, and his faithful dog Gromit (Wallace's more intelligent other half). Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Ep 1: Fright of the Bumblebees kicks off a series of four adventure games available for $9.99 each (800 Microsoft Points) from the Xbox LIVE Arcade.

As the subtitle suggests, Fright of the Bumblebees puts Wallace and Gromit to the test on subduing a horde of unruly bees. You'll switch between playing as Wallace and playing as Gromit throughout the episode. By exploring the environments and coming up with some inventive solutions, you'll have to solve many mini-puzzles throughout the grander ones in various acts.

The in-game "How to Play" manual and in-game tutorial will help get you up to speed on how to interact with people and things. What's really helpful and available throughout the game is the Y button function. Press it and anything that is interactive is highlighted as a hotspot while everything else goes black. You can also easily toggle through interactive objects using the LB and RB buttons or right stick and select with the A button. The D-pad lets you select items to use from your inventory with objects in the environment.

An autosave feature saves the game at milestones or when you exit playing. There is also a bookmarking feature which lets you place up to four bookmarks at any point in the game. That's one thing I definitely recommend using at least twice. Once for a mini shooting game Achievement and once for an apparent glitch (more on that later). When you continue your game from a previous save, you'll be reminded what happened when you last played. You can also see "The Story So Far" while playing by selecting "Your Game" from the pause menu, incase you forgot where you were at.

Visually, the claymation style looks great in HD. The whimsical music complements the art style as well. You definitely feel like you are actively participating in an animated short.

If you find yourself stuck on a puzzle, you can adjust the difficulty level by setting the "Give hints" option. There are 4 levels you can set: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, and Often. By setting it to an easier difficulty, you'll get more audio hints from characters in the game, which is blended seamlessly in the gameplay.

Wallace & Gromit is a 4-part episodic game series, but each part stands on its own. This first episode may be completed within a few hours, depending on how complete you want to be. There are several challenging Achievements to gain and a leaderboard ranking which is based on how much dialogue you've heard. Once you know how to solve the puzzles, the next play-through is much quicker.

There was one little glitch encountered which hampered an otherwise fun gameplay experience. If you aren't careful on how you proceed (and you wouldn't know otherwise), you may hit a spot where there is no way forward in the game. That may force you to restart the game. Without trying to spoil too much, make sure you add a bookmark before trying to solve a puzzles as Gromit the second time you use him. Warning, there may be spoilers for you in the following link, but it described the same problems I had. See more details on the glitch experienced here on xbox.com.

Even if you haven't kept up with Wallace & Gromit's shows, you'll enjoy the light-hearted humor in this game. It isn't essential to know anything about Wallace & Gromit to enjoy the game. It'll leave you wanting to check out more on the duo. Bonus points to Telltale Games for managing to pull off a game without a single kill! This is a game that is universal in its appeal and can easily be adjusted to any skill level. This first episode is a solid introduction to the series that will leave you looking forward to more in the following Wallace and Gromit episodes. I definitely recommend a relaxing, entertaining and enjoyable play of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees!