Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Where’s Waldo: The Fantastic Journey brings the third Waldo book by Martin Handford to virtual life. Revisit a classic book character in an all new light on the Wii with a game that is unlike any other game. With the Wii-mote, you have to scour a large image to look for the striped adventurer and his friends.
What’s Hot
Where’s Waldo isn’t just a shovelware game on the Wii. It is something much more than that. It all begins with a faithful recreation of the pages of the beloved book. If you crack open the book alongside the game, you’ll notice that the pictures are the same but the hiding places of the wandering Waldo and his friends have changed. The backdrops for the worlds you search aren’t static; in fact, they are animated just you imaged when you first looked at a Waldo book. If you are familiar with the books, you can still appreciate the game for adding more life to the material that already includes a lot of personality.
One really helpful feature is using your trusty dog Woof to find objects you are having a tough time locating. The cursor leaves a hot and cold trail when you zero in on the spot and Woof starts barking. To limit his help, you first need to find hidden bones in the map to activate it, so the element of search is still important. If you try and randomly click every inch of the screen, the screen will lock itself out and put you in a “dizzy” state where you need to shake the Wii-mote to clear the cobwebs. With waggle controls being a non-desirable feature for any Wii game, this punishment will keep you on your toes to click just the right spots.
What’s Not
When a new map is unlocked, you have to first find Waldo and other main characters. You use the Wii-mote to scroll across the entire photo. Once those are found, the game takes you through more things to look for, be it a person or item. At that point, you are limited in your search to a sectioned off part of the map and can’t stray from it. When the search area is limited like that, you can’t help but feel like your hand is being held along the way. Part of the fun in a Waldo book is spotting with your eagle eyes tiny objects from a massive image cluster and that is taken away with this feature.
It also shortens up the game. The Fantastic Journey tries its best to have you come back to old maps and try out new challenges, but it doesn’t help that there is a timer, and to get a good score (no real reward for getting a good score anyway), you need to be quick in your searches for Waldo. That isn’t a problem when you are in the limited sections of the map and you can easily make up for lost time when you are off the rails finding Waldo.
Final Word
Where’s Waldo is executed very elegantly on the Wii. It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t and sticks with the already brilliant source material. The Fantastic Journey enhances Waldo in a way that would be impossible in print form.
