Gamertell Review: Wallace and Gromit Episode 3: Muzzled! for PC

Title: Wallace and Gromit episode 3: Muzzled!
Price: $8.95 or $34.95 for the series
System(s): *PC, Xbox live
Release Date: June, 15, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Telltale games (Aardman)
ESRB Rating: “E for everyone+10″ for comic mischief
Pros: great humor, fun mini games, and you play as the lovable Gromit!
Cons: some glitches, though they can be fixed, and controls can be a hassle at times.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up, 98 A * * * * 1/2

The third installment of the Wallace and Gromit game Muzzled is now out and ready to play. In this one, Wallace invents a ice cream maker that turns anything into a flavor of ice cream, which he intends on using to raise funds at the upcoming fair sponsored by Monty Muzzle.

Monty Muzzle, a seemingly nice guy, has asked the town to raise money to help build a shelter for all the stray dogs in the neighborhood. You find out later that he has an ulterior motive for the dogs. As Gromit, you must rescue his dog friends, and save the town from the villainous Muzzle.

It’s a dog eat dog world!

The game play is same as the other two, there are three parts you must complete to beat the game. In the first part, you have to build the ice cream machine by getting the pieces from the stray dogs who stole them. Then in the second, you have to save the stray dogs by playing the carnival games to get pieces of paper with clues on them, and in the third you need to foil Monty’s evil plan.

You spend a good chunk of the game at the carnival. There you can play several games such as, “Beat the Chicken” (at a game of tic tac toe), and “Guess the Amount of Gumballs.” Of course, since Monty is such a sleaze, he designed all his games to be unbeatable and force you to pump in ticket after ticket. This is where Gromit comes in to save the day!

You have to beat each one so that you can retrieve a piece of scrap paper from one of the townspeople. The paper contains clues as to where the dogs are. For instance, Mr. P is using his piece to write down possible guesses to the bubble gum game, and you have to help him guess the correct amount so he’ll be done with the paper and give it to you.

In each game they have a mini game where you need to use words; in the first one you needed to help the news stand lady write a good insult, in the second you had to pick on various objects to make her feel better, and in this one you need to play around with a fortune machine to help the crazy Scottish guy write a love poem. I always enjoyed these because you get to see the trail and error of making the wrong sentence and humiliating the intended target.

You play mostly as Gromit in this one. You don’t really get to play as Wallace till the end, but that cuts down on needless conversations.

Who would eat fish flavored ice cream?

There are a lot of glitches in this game! For instance, sometimes if you use the ice cream maker, you get stuck at a close up view of the machine and have to restart the game. Also, I was unable to find a key item I needed because the cut scene needed to make it appear never happened. They did fix the game since its release, so if you are experiencing a glitch, be sure to re-download the most recent copy. Your saved games should still be there.

For the most part the puzzles are pretty straightforward, but a few still can cause you be rather frustrated. For instance, you have to make a pie for Monty and add ice cream to it, but this game does not allow you to combine inventory items so it can be rather confusing trying to decide how to accomplish this task.

As always, the controls can be annoying; you use the arrow keys to move Gromit, and the mouse for everything else. At times, Gromit can wedge himself between something and you will need to restart the game to get him out. It would also be nice if you could skip some of the cut scenes that you saw already.

Another great save by Gromit!

So, as always, this was anther fun game by Telltale games. It’s hard to come up with new things to say about the games because I noticed that if you like one game in the series, you pretty much like them all; maybe some more than others.

Glitches are a great way to ruin the fun of a game, I wasn’t able to complete this one part without having to re-download the game. Once I was playing glitch free though, the game became a lot more enjoyable.

You can’t help but laugh at the naivety of the townspeople, and the fact that the dog is the only one who is wise to Monty’s scheme. I knew the second I saw him he was bad news!

You can purchase this game on Telltale’s website as either a whole series for 34.95, or individually for 8.95. It’s of course cheaper to buy the whole series at once. Or purchase it through Xbox live.

Site[Telltale Games]