Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up

For kids who can get past a confusing and complex set up, this interactive adventure is an exciting, entertaining, and innovative approach to gaming and storytelling. Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up takes a lot of patience. First, kids need to work out how all the different parts fit together, and what exactly their role in the story is. Then, many "jobs" involve assigning the right contraptions to do the work -- and then waiting. Finally, the story unfolds slowly, with new material coming over the course of multiple days.

But, these aspects are actually what make Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up delightfully unique. Wallace, Gromit, and the supporting characters are wonderfully animated and voiced -- and are just as wacky and fun as you'd expect them to be. Kids who get into it can really feel as though they're in the story, and it becomes an immersive experience. The AR adds a nice element in which kids move around to act on objects that appear to be in the room with them. That said, Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up isn't really a game -- and that becomes clear with the kinds of jobs that kids are asked to complete. Once a day or at certain plot points, kids can play an AR game to, for example, repair a rocket ship that's caught fire, or explore a room to look for target items. But most of the jobs that kids complete to earn points involve sending out the contraptions they build to jobs and then just waiting as a clock ticks down on however long the job is supposed to take. There, the "game" becomes figuring out how to manage your inventory and coordinate your worker contraptions. One downside is that checking in on how "business" is going can be a real time suck, and can encourage kids to obsessively check their device multiple times throughout the day. Overall though, for kids who have the time -- and patience -- this can be a really fun way to experience a story.