Game picks

'Where the Wild Things Are" (PS3/X360/Wii/DS; E10+) is, in the end, your average everyday movie tie-in game. You run around, you jump over chasms, you hack and slash at bushes, blobs and fireflies, and you do so in a purely linear fashion, save a hub that you return to after every level. Pretty much every movie game since 2001 has followed this template.

Where this game is different, however, is in the route it took to get to this play style.

Nobody who has read the book or seen the movie is going to conclude that it's a natural video game setting; basically, the plot is Max shows up, Max does some stuff, Max leaves. There's little conflict, even in the movie, other than social conflicts; Max vs. his parents, Max vs. the wild things, wild things vs. other wild things. To get around this, the game came up with a completely new story, the first half of which finds Max trying to fit in with his wild new friends, and the second half of which involves the search for a new island for the wild things.

How adults perceive the game, then, will depend largely on their willingness to accept a new "Wild Things" tale. Children, however, have few such qualms, and the few young test subjects in my home were absolutely transfixed by the muted color palette of the game and the minimal, sometimes barely-there soundtrack.

Given its presentation which necessarily deviates from the typical "kids' game" fare thanks to its source material, "Where the Wild Things Are" might actually be a worthwhile purchase for children looking for something different. Adults, however, are bound to be disappointed by how familiar a package "something different" can be.