Over the last two weeks, Ludia has brought their video game adaptation of the highly successful Where's Wally? book series to DSiWare in Europe, cutting down their game Where's Waldo? The Fantastic Journey into three episodes. We didn't exactly think too highly of Where's Wally? Travel Pack 1 and Travel Pack 2, and, expectedly, the same can be said of Travel Pack 3.
Everything's pretty much the same as before, Story and Party being the only gameplay modes available. The former continues from where you left off in Travel Pack 2 and unsurprisingly, basically nothing has changed. There's still the same variety of missions on offer here, having you do such things as find people and items or spot the differences between two pictures, with no new types included. There are only nine missions available across three new areas throughout the adventure, and disappointingly these can be completed in less than an hour, just like the previous games.
Your missions are ranked in the same way as before, grading your performance in stars depending on how fast you complete a mission. The three difficulty settings remain the same, affecting the size of your searching space and how near to your object that the game automatically places your focus. These create some replay value, but considering that the missions aren't very interesting to begin with, it's hard to imagine players getting much value out of this.
Party Mode, as before, splits players into two different teams and tasks them to locate a set of items across the map. They keep on doing this until their star meter has filled up and when it does, Wally reveals himself and whoever finding him first wins. DS Download play disapointingly is still not supported, so for players looking to try multiplayer with a friend, both will have to have a copy of the game.
No changes have been made to the controls. The player uses the stylus across the touch screen to scroll through a level and find the item or person they're searching for, which is simple and a natural fit for the game. The graphics are identical to previous releases, naturally, but with their outdated drawing style and the fact that most of the time you'll be looking at still images, there's nothing too interesting here. The audio remains bearable but generic, and there are no new tunes throughout the game.
Conclusion
Travel Pack 3 marks the last episode of Where's Wally in this DSiWare set and at this point, the end couldn't come sooner. Those who enjoyed the first two travel packs may begin to get bored with this as well, as the missions feel even more tedious after playing through the entire run. While this title wouldn't be bad for those who enjoy the genre, for everyone else, this is one to approach with caution.
Comments 12
Even more not finding Waldo! Man, I'm running out of jokes
Well, at least it's the last entry.....
@Xkhaoz it's okay, i was already out the second i was born...
"Find him at your own risk"
"Not a stripe has changed"
"Go find something else"
Man, I love the Nintendo Life one-liners.
I don't know it's a great idea because I do like where's Waldo books.
Why ever was the name Wally changed to Waldo in the US? That's what I'm wondering.
@SoulSilver Americans feel the need to change the name of everything.
@DannyBoy I was thinking the same thing.
Nice to see the NL team spending their hard-earned cash to download and review every one of these games, even if they know the games will suck. Good job guys and girls.
I've always stunk at Where's Waldo? I don't think I've ever found Waldo.
theyve been using the same frickin pictures it seems for everything. im fairly certain ive seen all of the pictures referenced in this review, and ive only seen the first 3 or 4 books. theres a total of 7; come on...
EDIT - and to stop the america bashing, heres the answer to the waldo question...
quoted from Christine at yahoo answers:
"I live in Canada and I've always known him by Waldo.
Apparently, his name is different everywhere though. He's called Charlie in France, Effy in Israel, Walter in Germany, Willy in Norway and Holger in Denmark.
I can't find an exact answer, but Wikipedia says the names just changed with the language translations, and when they did that, they also gave them new personalities...?
So, it's probably just to be able to see the difference between all the Wally's/Waldo's, I guess."
@TheNewestBooM The name "Wally" definitely carries a different connotation in America, sounding more like a friendly uncle than a nerdy traveller. Maybe this can explain the difference.
As for the screen shots, while this banner is the same as one of the others, all of the shots for each game in our database are unique. We've requested more as well as a unique banner from the publisher, but until they get back to us we can unfortunately just provide you with the three that we have.
Why is it called wheres wally.Its called wheres WALDO!
@SAMUS: Read the posts above you.
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