Wallace And Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 4: The Bogeyman
Available for Windows PC
Developer: Telltale Games
Official website: www.telltalegames.com

Game summary from Telltale Games:
"Wallace has been admitted to Prickly Thicket, the oldest country club in Lancashire. Wallace and his faithful caddie Gromit get wrapped up in a decades-old club dispute that threatens to destroy their peaceful West Wallaby lifestyle, and the duo must fight to save the neighborhood they hold dear!"

Review summary:
Wallace And Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 4: The Bogeyman is a solid puzzle solving game with strong visuals whose experience is only marred by some odd bugs throughout.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Read the full review below.

Wallace And Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 4: The Bogeyman - review

Wallace and his dog Gromit end their Grand Adventures episodic series with Episode 4: The Bogeyman. In this game Wallace finally realizes that he has somehow accidentally asked a neighbor to marry him. In addition, Wallace has also been invited to join a centuries old country club whose secretive tendencies have earned it the targeted rage of a jealous constable.

Gameplay
The Bogeyman is basically the same type of game as Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal with the ability to switch characters here and there. What this means is the object and style of gameplay is the same: move your character with the WASD keys and click on clues and levers. In general, the game has interesting puzzles (sticky squirrel?!?!) which is where most of the fun will be derived. For example, one puzzle has you trying to play golf to get keys which are used in a weird place and so on. One area in particular where this game stands out is in the frequency and obviousness of hints. In this game, hints are heard in the form of Wallace thinking aloud or something similar, which leads the player in the right direction. I don't remember that sort of player support in Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. It may have been in the game, but it says a lot about its implementation if I never noticed. The puzzles go from fairly easy to pretty hard, but if you get stuck Telltale Games has a forum devoted to helping players help each other. Overall, it's a great puzzle game that is worth the money, especially to fans of the characters.

Presentation
Here is a place where I was both happy and sad. I was happy that this game looks somewhat better than Tales of Monkey Island while actually running at a good framerate with details up. Tales of Monkey Island barely ran except on 800x600 resolution on a computer that runs other games well. However, this game is infested with visual bugs. Telltale Games should have left this one in the oven a little while longer, because the texture clipping is obvious. It isn't at a level where you can't appreciate the claymation art style, but it is there. Objects sometimes disappear, facial textures clip frequently and Wallace's vest seems like it has sparkly sugar all over it. Once again, if you can overlook these bugs, the game has great charm. Everything is modeled in the claymation style, from the fact that the characters' skin and clothes have human shaped fingerprints on them to the fact that the eyelids appear and reappear as if stop-motion animation is being used. Also, mouth and face animations are cut in and out in a choppy way to achieve the same affect (it is very obvious with the newspaper vendors' lips). If this would have had more time in the hands of the developers, it would probably have been a spotless presentation, but as it is the game looks good but not great.

Overall
Wallace And Gromit's Grand Adventure: The Bogeyman is a great way to conclude this recent game series, except for the fact that the game seems a bit rushed when it comes to graphical bugs. I enjoyed the interesting puzzles and storyline, even with the weird clipping issues. All I ask from Telltale Games is that they let their games be worked on just a tiny bit longer.