Where's Wally Now?

Sitting in the dentist's waiting room every six months was one of our more horrendous formative experiences. The only thing that made it bearable was the occasional presence of a Where's Wally? book.

Scouring page after page ticking off a checklist of elusive stuff in the jumble of cartoon carnage was a treat back then, and bringing the Wally books to your pocket is an inspired idea.

Well q-wally-fied

The basic premise of the game is the same as in those well-thumbed books of our youth: find a stripy-jumpered bespeckled bloke in the midst of a '90s cartoon version of a J.S. Lowry painting. Tap the befuddled gent when you eventually spot him and you'll trigger a 'good job!' animation.

But it doesn't end there, as Wally's similarly dressed chums have also managed to lose themselves in the various throngs.

The game is spread out over seven time zones as Wally goes all H.G. Wells on us (for no apparent plot-based reason). You'll be spending your time scouring periods and events as varied as the Stone Age, the Gold Rush, and Being a Pirate.

Plain old stuff-finding levels are the mainstay, but there are some nice changes of pace in the form of the villainous Odlaw's mini-games. These range from a shooting range tap-fest to a fast-paced train track-placing puzzle game.

It's these and the more interesting pictures that make Where's Wally Now? an improvement over its predecessor, Where's Wally? in Hollywood.

Kidulthood

Where's Wally Now? is clearly aimed at children, though some of the levels can require a good deal of patience.

Rather than having free rein in any particular stage you get a time limit, which does a good job of injecting some urgency into the whole affair. You'll need to be quick to earn all three coins on offer in a stage.

The same tired problems haunt this game that we see in almost every touchscreen build Java game, however - at times you'll be tapping squarely on a stripey child only to be told that you're tapping the wrong place.

It's annoying when it happens, but it's not frequent enough to undermine the experience as a whole. Despite being obviously meant for kids, in Where's Wally Now? both progenitors and progeny will find a compulsive little search-'em-up with plenty to do and lots of nostalgic fun to be had.

Where's Wally Now?

Inaccurate controls occasionally vex, but Where's Wally Now? is a totally harmless, and at times surprisingly original, rendition of the classic kids' non-literature we know and love
Score
Matt Sakuraoka-Gilman
Matt Sakuraoka-Gilman
When Matt was 7 years old he didn't write to Santa like the other little boys and girls. He wrote to Mario. When the rotund plumber replied, Matt's dedication to a life of gaming was established. Like an otaku David Carradine, he wandered the planet until becoming a writer at Pocket Gamer.