The Spiderwick Chronicles

It may be preaching to choir, but it needs to be said – video-game adaptations of films hardly ever succeed in producing high-end quality. That’s right, for at least every 10 licensed video games, only one in the pack may be deemed worthy of attention. So is The Spiderwick Chronicles any different than the norm? Unfortunately for all gamers, and not to forget fans of the series, it’s not.

Let’s get this out of the way because it needs mentioning – I highly advise everyone looking to play the video game to watch the film or at least read the book before buying the game because it’ll make it that much easier to understand the storyline. Also, you’ll at least know beforehand if you are even interested in playing out your favorite scenes from the movie or book.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the storyline; it’s one that runs the usual course set by the fantasy world forerunners such as Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia with having a young hero out and about trying to find a way to stop an evil presence (in The Spiderwick Chronicles is Mulgarath, an evil shape-shifting ogre) from doing his wicked biding. If you have watched any of the last fantasy-film entries, then you’ll know what to expect right from the start in terms of storyline progression.

As for the game you’ll play as one of three characters – Molly, Jared and Simon Grace – from the movie that’ll go on their hunt through the main location of the film, Spiderwick Estate. To fill everyone in on how the “fantasy world” is connected to the real one, Jared Grace just so happens to stumble upon a secret room in the Spiderwick Estate and finds the book “Arthur Spiderwick's Guide to the Fantastical World Around You,” a book written by their great uncle. This is when all the magical creatures come out to play, many of which are out to take the book for their own.

For the gameplay, the genre of the game is basically a hack-‘n-slash with a bit of item collecting. There are a few objectives to help diversify the gameplay, such as catching faeries. This portion of the game is reminiscent of Ape Escape in which players will run around the game world with a special net and try and catch faeries that are in the air or on the ground. The upside of catching faeries is the ability to use their special abilities to your own advantage. With abilities such as strength, health regeneration and much more, this makes the game a little more interesting with picking and choosing which faeries you want to carry along for your journey. Up to three faeries are allowed, so picking and choosing wisely is a must.

Also, each of the characters is equipped with a different weapon which can eventually become stronger through attack combos as he or she kills more enemies. But, don’t look as this as your chance to be Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden; The Spiderwick Chronicles is blatantly a button-smasher with no need of intelligence to defeat your enemies.

The worst thing about The Spiderwick Chronicles has to be the field guide from the game option menu. Having to open that up every time to learn what you have to do next is very detrimental on advancing through the game with haste as you end up reading through a lot of boring text. Another problem is that the tasks are usually detailed very clear or quite vague – sometimes you’ll never know what to do but randomly guess what the next step at completing the quest is.

As for the graphics, they aren’t as disappointing as the core gameplay. You’ll run into a few frame-rate problems, but they don’t occur frequently enough to bother your run through of the game. In addition, to bring players up to speed on what is happening, are several clips from the film that are spread throughout the game to make it a little more interesting. Not the most enticing offer, but I am the sure young ones won’t care too much about the graphics and what is presented before them.

Gameplay: 5.0
Be prepared to fight off a lot of generic goblins with all your might. It’ll only take about six or so hours to speed through The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Graphics: 6.0
The graphics are nothing that’ll rise to the heavens. They are what gamers should come to expect with licensed video games: dull and hardly “next-gen” material.

Sound: 6.5
If you liked the soundtrack and score of the movie, then you’ll feel at home with the video game.

Difficulty: Easy
It’s barely on the difficult side of things; you’ll hit buttons repeatedly without having much consequence on receiving damage in return.

Concept: 4.0
If it wasn’t for the license, this game wouldn’t receive any attention from a publisher due to its mediocrity.

Overall: 5.5
The Spiderwick Chronicles won’t appeal to anyone that is out of their teens – this is primarily aimed at the younger crowd, the fans of the film, and devotees of the books. Look elsewhere to spend your money if you aren’t a part of those three groups.