The Spiderwick Chronicles, a game based on the movie of the same name, based on the best selling book of the same name, was published by Sierra Entertainment and developed by Stormfront Studios for the Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS, and PC (not available on the PS3 for some reason). This review will be based on my experiences of the game using the Nintendo Wii and will be written without any prior knowledge of the book or the movie as I never read or saw it.

Basically the story follows the Grace kids exploring the secrets of their uncle’s magical book. In this title you play as Jared, Simon and Mallory Grace exploring the hidden world of the unseen within the large, extremely well designed house and forest areas. Each of the three Grace children are playable at some point of the game and each also carry their own set of abilities, as well as a character named Thimbletack the Brownie whom lives in a bird house and rhymes everything. The gameplay within the title is pretty repetitive, but at the same time varied in some cases. What I mean by this is that you will be doing a lot of exploring for certain items and bringing them back… A LOT of this is done, very repetitive. That being said however, there are a lot of different types of gameplay spread out throughout the short game length, things like simple puzzles (use an item in your inventory to pass a locked door for example), boss battles, and timing minigames. A lot of the gameplay is also very simplified, attacking only requires a single button, and while each character has a different weapon (baseball bat, water gun filled with vinegar, and fencing sword) the player need only push the button at the right time to get the moves performed (of which you upgrade throughout the game). It also only involves a single button to explore and examine items and creatures to build your field guide and earn more for the game’s progress.

The graphics within the game are pretty average, character animation, while not choppy, are nothing fluid or amazing. They do what they’re made to do and nothing more, once more, items you can examine sort of appear a different shade, so it’s not like you can walk by a crucial item and not know it, maybe walk by an item and not be able to pick it up until later, but by the difference from everything else, you’ll know its important. The scenery however is much more impressive, the design of the house looks like a lot of effort was put into it, not only to impress gamers, but to keep the comparison between film and game as close as possible.

Sound wise, while there is some voice acting, pretty much every item you investigate has only one sound clip, otherwise there may just be grunts hitting bad guys or being hit by them.

The controls using the Wii are handled by moving around using the nunchuk analog stick and moving the camera around by holding the C button, everything else can either be handled by swinging the wiimote or pushing the A button. A couple of times I noticed that, with the bat for example, it must have a magical property, because I seem to be able to hit goblins without touching them or through debris lying around thanks to the weak collision detection in the game.

Otherwise aside from gathering items, examining and developing your field guide, and the story itself; players can also find and gather sprites using their sprite nets, paint them, and be granted special one-time-use magical powers. There are also a few weak but present mini-games that put players in an arena where they try to catch as many sprites as possible or battle enemies with up to two whole players!

All in all, I admit that this might not show the true power of the game as it may or may not be true to the movie/book, but from a game only perspective, I find The Spiderwick Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii to fall into the dreaded ‘quick-buck-based-off-movie’s-profit’ category you find so many movie based games to fall into. It is however, very simplified and might be a perfect game to get your young cousin or child into the world of video games.

Graphics: 2.0 / 5.0
Gameplay 1.5 / 5.0
Sound 1.0 / 5.0
Replay value 2.0 / 5.0






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