Introduction: Hmm - another children's movie tie-in. Have the developers sat back and let the movie link do the talking or have they produced a game that can stand on its own two feet. Happily it's the latter, and although it has its dodgy moments, both fans of the movie and others will find a pretty enjoyable game here.

GamePlay: You'll play as one of four characters during the game: the three children - Jared, Simon and Mallory and the 'Brownie' Thimbletack. The children each have an individual weapon which they'll use to despatch the hordes of goblins with. Jared has a baseball bat, Simon a goblin-dissolving squirt gun and Mallory has a fencing sword. The baseball bat is the most fun, though a little violent - with a combo available that will beat the goblin senseless then launch it into the air before smacking it for a home run. Each time you kill a goblin you can collect its teeth (!), with improved attacks being unlocked as you do so.

Thimbletack starts off as a grumpy 'boggart' until you feed him some honey at which point he turns into a friendly 'brownie' who speaks in rhyming couplets. His role in the game is to scamper around inside the walls of the house finding important items while skewering cockroaches with well aimed pins used like throwing spears. Said cockroaches let out a sad little squeal as they're hit which made me feel a little sorry for them. I enjoyed Thimbletack's first level, but the second and subsequent ventures into the wall cavities started to get a little tedious as they are just a repeat of the first - jump around the various levels (with jumping handled automatically), avoid the odd electricity surges arcing across gaps and collect another item.

While exploring the house and surroundings you'll notice items tagged with floating icons which will be an eye if you can just look at it or a hand if you can pick it up / interact. For several items you will only be able to pick them up when playing as a specific character which is a little odd - but at least it is still clear that it's an important item so that you'll know where to find it when you are that character.

Quite soon into the game you will obtain the sprite net which you will use to catch the swarms of sprites you'll see once you've built your seeing stone monocle. After netting a sprite you'll have to 'paint' it to keep it which just involves holding the 'A' button down and moving the paint cursor around a page as the image appears below it. Each type of sprite (you can have three at a time) will give you a special power such as invincibility, dash, damage multiplier, health etc which is triggered by pressing 'up' on the control pad. It's probably just my clumsiness but I pressed this several times by mistake when I was supposed to have pressed 'down' to interact with a door / item etc. I found some sprites to be useful but never bothered with some others; maybe on hard difficulty it might require a more judicious use the powers.

Some parts of the game are linked via cut-scenes from the film itself and these are quite nice, though I know opinion is divided on whether such scenes in games are a good thing or not. Unfortunately they can occasionally be a little jarring as you crash into a scene with no real explanation as to what's going on. Due to the mechanics of the game you'll sometimes suddenly find all three siblings together in the cut-scene whereas you were alone during the actual game section.

Spiderwick has two instances of one of my least favourite level styles - the 'chased by a monster and no idea where to go so I'll die multiple times and have to do it all over again until I work out what to do' scenario. At least they're pretty short but I find this so annoyingly frustrating it rather soiled the ending for me.

Another slightly frustrating aspect of the game is the auto-jumping and the fact that it led to multiple deaths as my character leapt happily into oblivion. While I can understand the reasons for this being done, it could have done with a little more work as it's all too easy on one level in particular to accidentally stray into the auto-jump region.

The end of the game also bears a mention. Complete the final level against Molgarath and that's your lot - though you will probably find (unless you've been very diligent) that you're not at 100% completion. You can of course try to up that percentage, but I certainly didn't fancy spending the next couple of hours trying to hunt down the Phoenix feather or cockroach that I'd missed earlier. And this precludes me from seeing the complete ending where we see Professor Spiderwick being released from his magical imprisonment. This is a real shame - I suppose it gives players slightly more incentive to get to 100% and there are always the walkthroughs to make this process as painless as possible, but with this game's younger target audience it seems a little unfair.

Control: You control your characters movements with the nunchuck controller and it's nice that some degree of camera control is available by using the 'C' button. Holding it down and tilting the nunchuck gives some control though it's a little fiddly - I found a quick tap on 'C' usually centred the camera ahead of you. Movement around the house tended to involve quite a bit of careering off walls as it's quite hard to control your character sometimes - especially when the game decides to switch camera angle so that you have to run towards it rather than away as is normal. The WiiMote controls the current weapon - and for your main weapon you have a choice of hitting 'A' a lot (and I mean a lot - the game tends to develop into a bit of a button masher towards the end) or alternatively swinging the controller around. To be honest I found it far better to use the buttons. The 'B' button is used to control the ranged weapons, like the Jared's catapult and Thimbletack's cockroach skewering pins, which you aim by pointing the WiiMote at the screen.

There is also a dual purpose action performed to pull yourself up inside the dumb-waiter and release yourself from the grip of the river troll or an over-friendly goblin latched onto your back.

Graphics: Spiderwick Chronicles looks OK - like a number of Wii titles there's nothing there to make you go 'Wow' but it's quite acceptable. There are some dodgy areas such as poor collision detection and the River Troll that makes hardly a ripple in the pool that it splashes around in but there's nothing too upsetting. The loading screen which comprises a flat animation of leaves and seeds floating around the screen might have had a bit more effort put into it. Each character runs and moves in a slightly different way, with the less athletic Simon being a bit clumsy and Mallory running like - well - like a girl.

Sound & Music: The soundtrack is really nice and appropriate to the setting and style of the action currently on screen. I haven't seen the film but I suspect some if not all of this comes from the film soundtrack. Lip synching can be a dodgy area in a lot of games and it's certainly a problem here too - very noticeable in some scenes with the characters lips still moving well after the dialog has finished. Voice acting is acceptable - though nothing special.

Final Comments: Although my enjoyment of the game waned during the mid stages, I did complete it and that can't be said for a lot of games I've played. If your a fan of the film you'll enjoy playing as the characters and the cut-scenes will please - maybe encourage you to go watch the film again. It's not an overly long game, unless you decide to go for the magical 100% completion, but its target audience will still find plenty to keep them amused.

Pro: Good sound effects & music, nice linking cut-scenes from the movie. Difficulty level is pitched about right. Goblin bashing is fun (if a little repetitive)
Con: Too much item collection. Sometimes not very clear what to do next. Character control can be tricky at times
Final Score: 6.5

Reviewed by: Douglas Andrews