Where the Wild Things Are review

Aside from the option to record your own monster-scaring roar with the DS mic, Where the Wild Things Are is a largely by-the-numbers platformer based on the children’s book (well, the film of the book, predictably). Playing as wolf-suited hero Max, you have to round up the book’s monsters and use their various abilities – rock-throwing, rock-smashing, thorn-trampling – to get through levels, collecting items on the way.

There are some nice design ideas, with the monsters looking reasonably like their literary counterparts (albeit moving like cardboard cutouts) and levels arranged in layers that have you warping forwards and backwards, into and out of the screen – although the portions of each world can look so similar it’s easy to lose track of where you are, causing annoying step-retracing. There’s really nothing new here, but it’s a better than average film tie-in.

Jan 14, 2010