Charlie and the chocolate factory game review

Just as with Oompa-Loompa management, one press generally isn't enough to register a command. You regularly need to hit buttons more than once to get Charlie to jump, use a candy power, throw an Everlasting Gobstopper, and more. Since this is essentially a kid's game, these control issues don't cause you to die or suffer anything really grievous. Still, you do wind up falling down and retracing your steps far more often than necessary, which cranks up the frustration factor in short order.

Added frustration is caused by sloppy design. As with the Gloop example above, most tasks are unnecessarily troublesome due to poor instructions and issues within the game that make it tough to complete objectives. Whether you're trying to gather candy ingredients, lifting Oompa-Loompas into the air with Wonka's fizzy drink, launching candies into bins with catapults, or simply trying to take out one of Wonka's robots with a Gobstopper, chances are good that you'll get stuck somewhere.

And it's usually the worst kind of stuck, too, where you know exactly what you have to do and can even see the objective While Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may be aimed at kids, it's hard to imagine many of the under set actually finishing it.

The look and feel of the game is virtually identical across all three console platforms, although the Xbox version features slightly sharper graphics. It also has Dolby Digital and boasts p support for high-definition TVs. So that's the version to buy if you have a choice. Otherwise, though, there's little to separate the three editions, as all are equally bad.

Visuals are afflicted with a case of the jaggies, the candy comes in either generic bar form or as glowing Pac-Man-style power dots, and the camera often veers drunkenly motion sickness and chocolate probably aren't a good mix and gets trapped behind walls.

Colors are suitably gaudy, but most areas are so barren of detail that the factory comes off more like a real industrial complex than the fantastic playground of a fop who makes candy with magical midgets. Veruca Salt, the little brute, has just gone down the garbage chute. The music and audio effects, however, are outstanding. Virtually the entire cast--all of the principals are here, save Depp, who's voiced by a great imitator named James Taylor presumably not the "Fire and Rain" folksinger --reprises its roles admirably.

All the kids do a great job of bringing their characters to life with a fair number of extra lines not heard in the movie, especially Julia Winter as the so-bratty-you've-gotta-love-her Veruca Salt. The one audio drawback is the bizarre absence of the Oompa-Loompa musical numbers that are the high points of the movie. Still, great audio doesn't go very far when coupled with such poor gameplay. Games based on hot movie properties are rarely good, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn't break this trend.

The game design is really beautiful with a lot of detail put into each room and characters. The story is told by storybook like cut out characters that move and talk, which at first seems strange but you get used to it, but the opening and end story is computer animation which the characters look like something out of "Nightmare Before Christmas", not to say that the storybook look of the in-between stories is bad, it's just that they should have made each in between story CG.

In game play, you must solve a series of puzzles with the help of the Oompa Loompas to help rescue the children. Sometimes the puzzles are easy but every so often, some of the puzzles are challengingly confusing and you find your self stuck on a puzzle for thirty minutes trying to figure out what to do next. Overall, the game play is fun. The Oompa Loompas are hilarious and really fun to work with! When they are standing still, they begin to do push ups to pass the time.

This game is a lot like the Lemmings or Pikmin as in you have to get them to do things to solve puzzles.

Grandpa Joe also helps, press a button on your controller depending on which system you have and he gives you advice on how to solve the puzzles if you get stuck. You use candy powers during game play; you throw Everlasting Gobstoppers at your enemies. You use candy balloons to reach high places; even Fizzy Lifting Drinks make it on to this game as you use it to fly! And belch to come down of course. The game does have a few bugs.

When you sometimes tell an Oompa Loompa to do something, it will begin to run in circles or get stuck behind something, but a gentle nudge or follow command will fix that problem, it's not a big deal at all.

The characters are great; sadly Johnny Depp doesn't appear on this game as Mr. Wonka, but the Charlie from the movie does talk for Charlie on this game. James Taylor, doubtful if it really is the singer James Taylor, does a good job in Depp's place as Wonka, almost identical voice of Wonka from the movie.

The rooms and scenery in this game are amazingly detail and at times very beautiful, it is very exciting to actually walk through the Chocolate Room. I loved it. And it's got surreal and colorful set designs that make you think somebody's been spiking the Everlasting Gobstoppers with LSD. Wait a second--why are we even bothering to save Augustus Gloop? He's an obnoxious slob! There's no Depp to alternately creep us out and enchant us, no Oompa-Loompa odes to obnoxious children getting their just desserts, and no interesting visual elements.

Ostensibly, the plot of the game follows the movie, which in turn does a good job of tracing the events in Roald Dahl's classic children's novel. You play Charlie Bucket, the poor lad who wins a golden ticket entitling him to a tour of the chocolate factory of reclusive weirdo Willy Wonka.

The only difference between movie and game is that whenever one of Charlie's golden-ticket-holding comrades--Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teavee--is punished for his or her sins which, respectively, are gluttony, greed, arrogance, and anger here, you play a minigame to rescue them This concept actually seems pretty promising for a few minutes, and it's certainly a better idea than the Oompa-Loompa factory management in the completely different console editions of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game franchise.

But all the potential is wasted on boring minigames that are way too easy, even for little kids. They all center on simple tasks like collecting magical lollipops, clicking on mushrooms to save Augustus Gloop from the chocolate river, tilting a table to collect candies, bouncing the blueberry version of Violet Beauregarde around like a pinball, and clicking on Oompa-Loompas in the correct order to start them singing a rowing song which they actually don't sing--you just get some musical tones indicating a song, like in the classic handheld game Simon.

Objectives are practically hidden with instructions so obtuse that you're often unsure of what you're supposed to be doing. Midlevel Oompa-Loompa challenges providing bonuses and keys begin with no instructions other than a title like Pinball! And play time is stretched out with midlevel trips to Wonka's lickable wallpaper maze, where you wander corridors sampling candy flavors and doing Oompa-Loompa challenges to earn the keys needed to get out.

This isn't a whole lot of fun. Although the descriptions of the oddball candy are entertainingly surreal "Uncaramel!