Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Posted August 23, 2005
I'm beginning to find myself sounding like a broken record, but I have to say it again. When games based on movies ship so close to the release of the silver screen counterpart, you're bound to hit some nasty bugs and chances are high the game is going to feel rushed. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fits right in with the blanket statement I just made, with the bugs coming very early in the game. Just to clarify for those who may not know the game I am talking about, it's the latest movie to game based on the Warner Brothers movie of the same name that was a remake of a classic starting Gene Wilder as the enigmatic Willy Wonka.
Charlie starts out with our young protagonist Charlie Bucket feeling hopeless about his chances to find one of the five golden tickets that Mr. Willy Wonka, the recluse, has decided to put into his Wonka Bars. The bearer of the Golden Ticket is entitled to bring one guest and will receive a tour of a lifetime through the Wonka factory, with one of the children getting something that exceeds even their imaginations. Hmmm, what could that be?
Gameplay:
In the opening tutorial level, we take control of young Mr. Bucket and chase a $10 bill around the town through some basic platforming action where we learn the ropes on how to control Charlie and how to throw the weapons at enemies. Thankfully, the tutorial level is over quickly and we’re treated to one of many decent animated cut scenes in the game, both of the CG kind and the storybook type, before diving headfirst into the factory of Willy Wonka.
So in the movie(s), Charlie was a kid who seemed in awe at everything he saw, as timid as a field mouse, yet in the platforming game he's an outgoing guy who can repair almost anything, especially with the help of his Oompa-Loompa buddies. That's right, throughout each level you have to hunt for the mini munchkins and have them follow you around like little lost puppies. You can however, put them to work for you doing various jobs around the "rooms" that you enter such as harvesting candy from trees, or operating machinery that only someone of their stature could manage to control.
Since this is a platform game, there is an unusually high amount of collecting that can take place. Upon entering each level, counters will reset and you'll be prompted to collect a set number of various candy types or parts in a level, and if you do collect them all you'll get a new candy weapon type (like the Everlasting Gobstopper), or additional life added to your life bar. Some levels have additional collecting that needs to take place along with the one mentioned, but these tend to be a little easier as you can use the Oompa-Loompas to do all the dirty work and put the collected candy in the proper receptacle. Also a staple of any platform game is the dreaded jumping puzzles, and of course those are here but with the added benefit of having a poorly executed camera help you out. Now I know that each game developer needs to design the proper camera for its game type, but why oh why can't there be some sort of standardization like people do with other game engines. If one fantastic camera system is developed, the company could make a mint by licensing it to other games, and as a whole the genre would take a leap forward in terms of quality.
Other issues aside from the shoddy camera are the overall lack of quality in the controls department. Parts of this game could appear in the dictionary under the word unresponsive. Early in the game you'll find yourself needing to toss balled up Wonka-bots into multiple pipes to help build pressure in the pipes, but even grabbing the balls of Wonka-bots is a lesson in frustration as it will take a few button presses to actually grab the thing, then the animation jumps a little and you end up holding the ball. This is but one example of the poor controls, but others will be seen (like trying to organize the candy cannons, or even the jumping puzzles help exasperate the problem).
Graphics:
With such a colorful and whimsical movie to base this game off of, it would be easy to imagine an extremely bright and vibrant world in the game. However, the level of graphics here are far below the quality that I would have liked to have seen, but that could be just me being picky, because I'd be willing to bet the target audience would have no problem the game or its buggy graphics. One level in particular the bugs surfaced a lot, it was where small candy shooters would allow you to enter them to be propelled to a different section of the level. Well, sometimes Charlie would hit an invisible wall just barely after clearing the top of the shooter, and seem to fall back into it but end up on the floor beside it. This happened regularly throughout this part of the game and actually became quite annoying because I used Charlie as the "test pilot" for the puzzle this was to solve.
Audio:
Johnny Depp must have been out sick the day when the voice acting was done because he was the only cast member from the movie to not be featured in the game. That said, the voice work for Willy was still quite sharp and sounded pretty close to the Willy that Depp portrayed in the movie. Overall the voice acting was quite well done, especially when compared to the terrible job that Fantastic Four did.
Sound effects were about what one would expect from a game that was based on the whimsical movie of the same name with a lot of "sproings, boings and whirs" that fit the game quite well. The music to the game was largely forgettable, with nothing making a big impact and standing out for me to write about.
Conclusion:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory suffers greatly from movie tie in-itis, there is no reason to release a game that is in this condition as far as controls and graphical glitches. Sure the sales might falter a little when the movie moves out of the kids short term memory bank and they might not remember that there's a game two weeks after seeing the movie, but to the adult gamer who plays this with their child the bugs and glitches will tarnish the reputation of not only the console they play on, but also the development team and publisher of said game. Sometimes the best time to release a game is when it's done, not on the date it was promised.
Because of the flaws in the game, I hesitate to even tell someone to rent the game, but saying to skip it is downright mean because chances are it will keep the little ones busy for quite a while as the levels can be somewhat challenging and will help them exercise their brains slightly while sitting inside on a nice summer's day. Rent it.
Charlie starts out with our young protagonist Charlie Bucket feeling hopeless about his chances to find one of the five golden tickets that Mr. Willy Wonka, the recluse, has decided to put into his Wonka Bars. The bearer of the Golden Ticket is entitled to bring one guest and will receive a tour of a lifetime through the Wonka factory, with one of the children getting something that exceeds even their imaginations. Hmmm, what could that be?
Gameplay:
In the opening tutorial level, we take control of young Mr. Bucket and chase a $10 bill around the town through some basic platforming action where we learn the ropes on how to control Charlie and how to throw the weapons at enemies. Thankfully, the tutorial level is over quickly and we’re treated to one of many decent animated cut scenes in the game, both of the CG kind and the storybook type, before diving headfirst into the factory of Willy Wonka.
So in the movie(s), Charlie was a kid who seemed in awe at everything he saw, as timid as a field mouse, yet in the platforming game he's an outgoing guy who can repair almost anything, especially with the help of his Oompa-Loompa buddies. That's right, throughout each level you have to hunt for the mini munchkins and have them follow you around like little lost puppies. You can however, put them to work for you doing various jobs around the "rooms" that you enter such as harvesting candy from trees, or operating machinery that only someone of their stature could manage to control.
Since this is a platform game, there is an unusually high amount of collecting that can take place. Upon entering each level, counters will reset and you'll be prompted to collect a set number of various candy types or parts in a level, and if you do collect them all you'll get a new candy weapon type (like the Everlasting Gobstopper), or additional life added to your life bar. Some levels have additional collecting that needs to take place along with the one mentioned, but these tend to be a little easier as you can use the Oompa-Loompas to do all the dirty work and put the collected candy in the proper receptacle. Also a staple of any platform game is the dreaded jumping puzzles, and of course those are here but with the added benefit of having a poorly executed camera help you out. Now I know that each game developer needs to design the proper camera for its game type, but why oh why can't there be some sort of standardization like people do with other game engines. If one fantastic camera system is developed, the company could make a mint by licensing it to other games, and as a whole the genre would take a leap forward in terms of quality.
Other issues aside from the shoddy camera are the overall lack of quality in the controls department. Parts of this game could appear in the dictionary under the word unresponsive. Early in the game you'll find yourself needing to toss balled up Wonka-bots into multiple pipes to help build pressure in the pipes, but even grabbing the balls of Wonka-bots is a lesson in frustration as it will take a few button presses to actually grab the thing, then the animation jumps a little and you end up holding the ball. This is but one example of the poor controls, but others will be seen (like trying to organize the candy cannons, or even the jumping puzzles help exasperate the problem).
Graphics:
With such a colorful and whimsical movie to base this game off of, it would be easy to imagine an extremely bright and vibrant world in the game. However, the level of graphics here are far below the quality that I would have liked to have seen, but that could be just me being picky, because I'd be willing to bet the target audience would have no problem the game or its buggy graphics. One level in particular the bugs surfaced a lot, it was where small candy shooters would allow you to enter them to be propelled to a different section of the level. Well, sometimes Charlie would hit an invisible wall just barely after clearing the top of the shooter, and seem to fall back into it but end up on the floor beside it. This happened regularly throughout this part of the game and actually became quite annoying because I used Charlie as the "test pilot" for the puzzle this was to solve.
Audio:
Johnny Depp must have been out sick the day when the voice acting was done because he was the only cast member from the movie to not be featured in the game. That said, the voice work for Willy was still quite sharp and sounded pretty close to the Willy that Depp portrayed in the movie. Overall the voice acting was quite well done, especially when compared to the terrible job that Fantastic Four did.
Sound effects were about what one would expect from a game that was based on the whimsical movie of the same name with a lot of "sproings, boings and whirs" that fit the game quite well. The music to the game was largely forgettable, with nothing making a big impact and standing out for me to write about.
Conclusion:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory suffers greatly from movie tie in-itis, there is no reason to release a game that is in this condition as far as controls and graphical glitches. Sure the sales might falter a little when the movie moves out of the kids short term memory bank and they might not remember that there's a game two weeks after seeing the movie, but to the adult gamer who plays this with their child the bugs and glitches will tarnish the reputation of not only the console they play on, but also the development team and publisher of said game. Sometimes the best time to release a game is when it's done, not on the date it was promised.
Because of the flaws in the game, I hesitate to even tell someone to rent the game, but saying to skip it is downright mean because chances are it will keep the little ones busy for quite a while as the levels can be somewhat challenging and will help them exercise their brains slightly while sitting inside on a nice summer's day. Rent it.