Wallace & Gromit Grand Adventures Episode 3: Muzzled! Review

Someone think of the dogs!

We've been through a lot already in Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures - giant, killer bumble bees, unfriendly puppies, and even a murder attempt or two. But nothing could prepare us for what the third episode, Muzzled!, has in store, believe me.

A thunderstorm has hit West Wallaby Street and the local dog shelter has been destroyed, causing all the stray dogs in town to run amok. Luckily for the townspeople, a certain character is in town, named Monty Muzzle who specializes in fund-raising events and plans to run one in order to gather funds to build a new home for the street dogs. Or does he? Not all's as it seems at first in this quiet English town and its visitor... so it's up to Wallace and Gromit - well, mostly Gromit, as always - to get to the truth.

This newest episode's plot revolves around the fund raising fair, and thus, gives us another area of West Wallaby to explore - although a small area. It's something that sets this apart from the past episode which did not have much in terms of new places to visit. The puzzles are also a bit more complex to figure out, but nothing a few tips provided by the game can't help you with.

As we've come to expect from these episodic games, Muzzled! tends to be far more forgiving than the traditional adventure game, but even so, it has its own tricks, as not all tips are as obvious as the "use the hammer with the nail" kind.

The new characters introduced in this episode fit in well with the cast and to the overall Wallace and Gromit style - animals and humans alike. As in adventure gaming tradition, there's a chicken or three thrown in for good measure as well, and their role in the story is hilarious.

Muzzled! takes around two hours to finish, and is certainly a bit more dynamic that the first two episodes in this season in terms of figuring puzzles out. On the other hand, it feels much shorter than past episodes, without any sort of chapter divisions like in episode two. The climax of the story, however, is quite interesting, albeit a tad rushed. Still, it sets up the apparent season finale for episode four, The Bogey Man, nicely.