Coraline for Wii Reviews by Gamers

Neil Gaiman's Coraline, a novella about a parentally neglected little girl of the same name who discovers a parallel world where her "other mother" and father seem perfect -- except, of course, for those pesky button eyes -- is an eerie fairy tale rich with imaginative fantasy. The movie, helmed by the same man who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas and brought to life with a similar ultra-stylized stop-motion presentation, is sure to be a classic. But if you're hoping you or your kids will be able to relive the experience on Wii or PlayStation 2, I'm here to warn you now: what you play here, you will never be able to un-play, and what you see cannot be unseen. These interactive versions ditch the engrossing narrative of the book and the eye-popping makeover of the movie for uninspired, dated play controls, an imbalance of ridiculously easy puzzles and quicktime events too difficult for some adults, let alone kids, and sloppy visuals befitting a first-generation PS2 game. In other words, this is what happens when licensing goes bad.

Coraline will undoubtedly be labeled a kid's game due to the subject matter, but I'm not entirely convinced that I would let my own daughters go hands-on with it. This, because the story starts off sweet and innocent with Coraline exploring her home and performing an endless supply of menial tasks for her hateful parents and quirky neighbors, but a couple hours in and the mood flips, and all of a sudden the little girl is outrunning a crazed, button-eyed nemesis and fending off red-eyed rats in the darkness. Developer Papaya Studio has endeavored to preserve the tale and tone of the movie with storyboard cut-scenes, well-acted voice work for all of the characters, and an opening full-motion render, presumably direct from the film. Kids will definitely appreciate the voice work, but the storyboards gloss over pivotal points from the movie and fail to do the license justice. Meanwhile, a series of in-game cinematics seem amateurish in their construction and choreography.

The biggest problem I have with Coraline -- other than one particularly messy blockade that I'll get to -- is that the entire gameplay experience feels like a relic from two generations ago. Coraline moves slowly and clumsily about very restricted environments, which themselves lack in variation, and takes part in a series of blatant fetch quests transparently in place solely as a means to extend gameplay time. And by the way, this method doesn't work -- I made it to the final boss fight in about three hours, a truth that renders Coraline as one of the shorter titles to come along in recent memory, even by so-called kid's game standards.When Coraline is not looking around for a code to unlock her neighbor's doorway, for example, she's engaged in a series of simple mini-games like card matching, slingshot challenges, and block-pushing puzzles.

It all works well enough, but only that -- never will you be pleasantly surprised by an innovative control choice, or one that even subscribes to current standards. See Exhibit A: Caroline can't jump unless she nears an object that allows such an interaction, at which point you can tap a button and off she goes. Dated, for sure, but worse are the control choices that totally ignore the obvious. For instance, a slingshot shooting game that doesn't utilize the Wii remote pointer, but the analog stick.

Some of the obstacles are too easy for adults and perfect for kids. Moving the Wii the analog sticks or Wii remote and nunchuk around (depending on the platform) to cook some pancakes. Others are definitely too difficult for younger players. Music tests in which you'll have to press a series of obscure buttons together in order to play a song. I'd like to meet the kid who can press toggle Z, C, Z, and B while pressing up, down, left and right on the D-Pad in succession. Normally, music-based challenges run on a rhythm that you can fall back on if all else fails, but not so in Coraline. Here, the arrangement is randomly layered over a series of button taps that do not match up in the least.

Although I tested all versions of the game, I played to the very end in the Wii build. Perhaps this was my mistake because as the title was preparing me to do battle with the final boss, it crashed. I reset and tried to load the sequence again and once more it locked up. I have never been able to load the end sequence and can only assume the Wii iteration (and possibly the PS2) shipped with a glaring crash bug allowing the possibility that there is no way to complete the game, a huge oversight on the developer's part.



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