I must admit that I'm a sucker for Wallace & Gromit. I love them, I love their humour, and I love the amount of time and effort that is always put into their films. Apparently, for the film with the same title, manual animation means that only two whole seconds can be created each day. So when you go see the film at the cinema, or on DVD, just count to two out loud and that took these geniuses a full day to produce. But enough of my Lancashire praising - I'm from Yorkshire after all!

The game does an absolutely fantastic job of recreating the Wallace & Gromit feel. Everything looks authentic, even though the models in this game aren't made from the magic plasticine. The game offers quite a bit of freedom around Wallace's village, which looks amazing and is a joy to explore. By village standards the area is rather big, featuring many dark back allies and nifty little ledges that offer explorers rewards for their troubles. Like all good villages, there's a shop that allows you to buy things like miracle grow to help your vegetable be the biggest and the best, which offers a nice little Nintendogs-type mini game, where the thing you get to raise is a green vegetable. It's not so riveting but it's quite funny to see how well your new theory of playing music to it and cranking up the temperature fares at the end of the day.

You can look around the village at your leisure as one of the three playable characters in the game; Wallace, Gromit and new friendly bunny Hutch. While controlling one character, the other two follow you. Each character has their own unique abilities; Wallace is the tallest of the bunch and so can reach ledges that small Gromit can't. There are many parts of the game, in missions or around the village that require a second hand to reach places or advance. These spots are marked with little green footprints. Just whistle for a teammate and they get into position, combining efforts to allow you to press on. One example sees Gromit working a pulley that carries Wallace up onto one of the rooftops in the village. How I laughed!

All three characters boil down to the same gameplay mechanic though and they all end up playing very similarly beneath the small differences. Equipped with Bunguns, the characters can use their vacuum gun to suck up pests, as well as things like cabbages to fire back out at enemies to stun them for a few seconds. The main weapon/utility in the game is the Bungun, but as you progress, gadgets like screwdrivers, Auto-Brollies and Bunny Hoppers become available, which spruce up the gameplay and each new gadget is aesthetically pleasing. The Bunny Hopper not only looks good, but allows your characters to hop high above the rooftops and get a better view of things.

For the most part of the game, you have to remove pests such as bunnies from people's gardens. You either acquire this work from villages, or it features as a compulsory mission that's given to you via some cut scene. The game really does feel like a lavish, quirky village in the Wallace & Gromit style, dampened and let down by the mini-game feeling gameplay. Most of the game consists of rounding up rabbits or other vermin into the swirling vortex of your vacuum vehicle machine. You normally either round up the rabbits on foot, sometimes using (and telling) your team to block off certain areas - or you suck the rabbits up and spit them into your main machine. You have to protect various vegetables from the gnawing teeth of the critters as you round them up too.

While this is a novelty for a day or so of playing, it simply becomes tiresome after prolonged play. The rounding up feels like some well done mini-game you might see on a new Monkey Ball title. Other villagers can give you other optional tasks, such as little on-foot races and 'find and return this to me and I'll give you a reward' missions. The reward is almost certainly a card for your collection, which allows you to advance later on. While villagers give you tasks and challenges very comically, with great characterisation, animation and speech, the lacklustre gameplay really puts a good thing to rest. Gadgets, working as a team and the novelty of switching characters on the fly is great and the exploration of the village is fantastic, but older audiences won't enjoy what's on offer, at least not for long.

The game's visuals are totally in keeping with the film's design, while complimenting the story are FMV's from the film - unfortunately these can't be skipped though. The game is quite detailed in some respects and it's always nice to see this level of careful attention to detail. For example, Wallace pulls various facial expressions for different situations and you can actually fire things at yourself (the camera) by getting your character to face you and shoot. Then the object you fired then bounces off the camera, in true cartoon style. Classic! Occasionally the camera can play havoc with rounding up bunnies however, sometimes nesting itself in a tree and blocking your view, so you turn in the wrong direction and the bunnies hop off without a trace. The camera is the only thing that really stands in the way of an otherwise graphical treasure.

The sound in the game fits the graphics like a plasticine glove too! The music changes depending on what you're doing; catching rabbits is quite upbeat in a Wallace & Gromit way kind of way, whereas the back allies have more of a sinister track running in the background. This dynamic score works as well as Mario Sunshine, leaving you with a warm impression after putting the game down. Voice talent is superb too; most characters talk and all of the characters have voices that really suit them, with accents that come across clearly and comically. Being from an accent-ridden region myself, I can really appreciate the work that's gone into the vocal talent here. As Wallace walks past villagers he might wish them a good day; many other little touches like this one contribute to superb audio all round.

It's hard to put across how I feel about Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It is like a beautifully handmade plasticine set with cameras lined up, musical and vocal talent at the ready - and then Arnold Schwarzenegger stands on it, comes up with a cheesy one-liner and ruins the whole experience. While Frontier has created a beautiful setting for this game, a setting that will really appeal to fans of the film, the gameplay really doesn't stand out as anything much above average. Kids may be distracted by the authentic film feeling for a while and cute bunny roundups should also appeal to them for a good amount of time too, but if you don't expect a fantastic platforming game with a lot of depth then you won't be disappointed.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).