The synopsis for Pixar’s latest animated movie, Wall-E reads as follows:
WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot and his programming was to help clean up. You see, it’s set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash.
And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.
Well, I have not watched the movie yet (coming soon to a theater near you) but I have played the movie tie-in on the Nintendo DS. Yeah, you might say that it is another month and yet another movie tie-in but I’ve noticed that Wall-E is following the same trend as Iron Man DS and Speed Racer The Video Game.
These are games that are not made just to cash-in on a blockbuster movie but you can also see an unprecedented amount of polish which a year ago was lacking in this sort of games.
Wall-E is a 3D platformer and just like the movie synopsis, takes place in a deserted/dystopian version of Earth. A clean-up crew of sorts, Wall-E gets to convert trash into cubes which can be thrown at environmental obstacles, switches, enemies, etc. Special types of trash will result in explosive or magnetic cubes which can be used to destroy stuff, or propel Wall-E across obstacles.
The game’s art direction makes good use of cell-shaded graphics and this lends to its charm. Nothing better than many shades of brown and orange to convey a very pretty but dystopic feel. Even the game menus have a certain kind of modernistic style reserved for artsy games such as Planet Puzzle League. T
he sound is not bad as well, with Wall-E making funny noises when he falls over an edge.
My only gripe about the game is that the starting levels are a drag. Basically a over-extended in-game tutorial, these levels will have you jumping over obstacles and turning on switches and nothing else. Gimme something to blow up.
In any case, the game is a little charmer of a movie tie-in and its not hard to recommend it. Wall-E is available at Play-Asia with free shipping to certain countries. Click here for details.
