It’s easy to make a game gritty, or violent or hyper-realistic. It’s a lot harder to make a game charming, which is exactly what Where the Wild Things are ends up being.
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is a timeless children’s book, telling the simple story of a young boy going on a fantastic journey in the midst of a temper tantrum. Where I’m really confused is that the movie version seems to be a lengthy expansion of the books emotional themes, while the game seems to tell a completely different story. Rather than an exploration of anger and family. The game sees the island the Wild Things live on threatened by a black ooze. An ooze that could be interpreted to represent anger, or a loss of useful innocence, or just black ooze that’s destrying the island.
Which leaves me feeling rather conflicted. The story leaves me conflicted. On one hand, its nice and straightforward and works for the game. On the other hand, it leaves me wishing that a little more effort had been put into fleshing out the story, and shooting for something really magical.
For example, there’s a moment near the end, with the Wild Thing Alexander that verges on being very special, but instead stands out as being slightly weird because it comes out of nowhere, and doesn’t really fit into what’s come before. Its too bad, because there’s a lot of potential subtext could have tied the game back to the books themes, but that opportunity is wasted.
What’s also missing, and very oddly so, is any setup. You start the first level as young Max landing on the island in his little ship, and you immediately begin following a Wild Thing. There’s no background story or explanation as to how or why Max ended up on the island, which is frankly bizarre. Again, what could have been a touching (albeit completely different) story instead ends up falling far too short.
The gameplay consists primarily of platforming levels, with a little of racing mixed in via Wild Thing riding and sailing levels. The levels are appropriate to the age group its geared towards, so there are some challenging sections, but nothing truly difficult. However, as with most platform titles, there are a few annoying jumps to try and land, and some of the balancing areas seem tougher than appear. It also doesn’t help when the camera gives you a less than optimal angle.The sailing and riding levels are decent, and a nice change of pace, but they don’t offer a great deal of challenge either.
In addition to the story levels, you can also explore the village, and meet the Wild Things. Throughout the game’s levels and in the village, there are an assortment of different collectibles (one per Wild Thing) to gather. The more you find, the more things you unlock in the village, such as insect hives, animal hutches and plants in the garden. It’s a nicely paced evolution that makes the village worth spending time in after each level.
Visually, the Wii version looks respectable, with a decent variety of jungle and cave environments. The size and strangeness of the Wild Things is captured nicely as well. The animations for Max are also surprisingly fluid. Not exactly Uncharted or Assassins’s Creed, but much nicer than I would have expected. Obviously, the graphics are better on the PS3 and XBox 360 versions.
On the downside, the selection of enemies is limited to a small variety of bugs and a couple of black ooze creatures. For the most part, fighting these creatures just involves mashing the attack button. And as your encounter wave after wave of the same enemies, you’ll wish the developers had put a little more work into the enemies.
Where the Wild Things Are is not the classic book, or the hit movie, in fact its maybe best described as Where the Wild Things Could Have been. Adult gamers might find it too short and too easy, but for the younger set, its a charming and fun adventure. It’s just too bad that the story was left undeveloped, thus giving it only the most superficial resemblance to the original work.
A review copy of the Wii version was provided to GamerPops.
