The Scoreboard #13

Wall●E

For being a movie-game, Wall●E is actually surprisingly good. That’s not to say it’s actually a “good game”, but it shocked us how little we hated the puzzle-solving platformer. As an added bonus, it’s a bit over two hours long and has a fairly light grip on its Achievements, so you don’t need to invest more than an evening in to it for a satisfying payoff. The awards aren’t really clever enough to praise, but there are enough time-trials and optional side quests that will eat up a good part of your session with it, each of the events unlocking both Achievements, and more events to fill your Gamerscore bank with.

Best Achievement: M-O is Easily Distracted (15 pts.) M-O will clean what is dropped on the floor in the Life on the Axiom level. – This Achievement scores based exclusively on its inclusion of M-O. The little neat-freak will follow you around the entirety of the Axiom level, and eluding him three times by littering is pretty straightforward and completely awesome. This award was almost given to the “knock over humans” Achievement, as causing 40 fat men pile up is quite the sight, but there’s something slightly intense about knowing that M-O is on your tail at all times, and that he wants to clean you so well that you’ll explode. It doesn’t get any points for being clever; it’s just a cool Achievement, and anything involving M-O is pretty much gold.

Worst Achievement: 500 Cubes (30 pts.) Crush down 500 Cubes in the entire game. – Easy to get, for sure, but unless Wall●E is planted in front of garbage piles, and is repeatedly creating/throwing trash-cubes, this probably won’t unlock. Along the way to crushing 500 cubes, ensure that, if you’re going to sit at a station to get the deed done, that 100 of each of the three cubes are created. There’s a chunk of GS to earn in crushing 300 cubes – 100 regular, 100 weighted and 100 energy – which will bring you over halfway to the ludicrous 500 mark. Or you could just not endure the pain of making and tossing cubes for an hour.

Easiest Achievement: The Cockroach (5 pts.) Find the cockroach. – There is no “finding” to be had here! The cockroach is our main man’s best friend, so he crawls about his robot-y body seconds before gameplay starts, and as seen in the film, the creepy crawler is never anywhere but right in front of Wall●E. By moving towards the cockroach – who is the first mission’s objective– this effort-free nickel will unlock.

Hardest Achievement: All Concepts (30 pts.) Get all Sketchbooks in the game. – Wall●E isn’t exactly a non-linear game, and secrets aren’t particularly well hidden, but the sketchbooks are very nondescript, small, and easy to miss. It’s strange that we missed so many, because there are so many of these things, but perhaps the promise of unlocking art was deterrent enough... Even Gamerscore wasn’t encouraging enough to bother with suffering the trials of exploring a boring world for books.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 9 (out of 10) – Clocking in at all of three hours, 500 points can be Achieved without going through the trouble of searching high and low for the radio/sketchbook items. Stick to the story, and take on the quick side missions as you see fit, and within a couple hours or more you’re rollin’ in the Gamerscore.

Overall: 9 (out of ten) – Wall●E is super easy. From the first Achievement that’s handed to you, to the last, it deals out hordes of Achievements in the form of impossible-to-fail mandatory time trials, 30 second long side-quests, and collectible items with an especially hefty value of points attached to them. As expected, it’s another kids-focused licensed game that is undemanding of its target audience. Make sure you see the flick first though – no matter how bad you want these Achievements, the game-adaptation will spoil the major plot points that are best seen elsewhere. Wall●E is the definition of “perfect weekend rental."

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