Where’s Waldo?

Although his star has dimmed over the past decade as modern kids have given up books in favour of more technologically advanced portable entertainment, when I was a kid the Where’s Wally? (or Where’s Waldo?, to use its American title) series was incredibly popular.

Not a single child in my class at school was immune to the delights of poring over the insanely detailed pages of each Wally book in order to locate the titular hide-and-seek champion. Kids loved the books because they sucked you into an entirely new world and your parents loved them because while you were hopelessly ensnared by Wally’s charms you weren’t out on the streets attaching fireworks to the tail of the neighbour’s cat.

Given the immense following that the franchise once possessed, the decision to release Where’s Waldo? (this Android release reverts to Wally’s less amusing American moniker) would seem like something of a masterstroke; most of the original fans will be hitting their mid-to-late twenties and many will have access to cutting-edge mobile technology – such as Android-powered phones.

Sadly, given the latent potential on offer, Capcom Mobile has failed in spectacular fashion here. Instead of giving fans of the bespectacled escape artist a digital selection of maps over which they can cast their roving eyes, Where’s Waldo? is made up of several uninspiring mini-games that do little to engage or excite the player.

Most of the time you’ll find yourself involved in insipid card challenges, where six cards are placed on-screen and you have to find which ones match, or which is different from all the others. It’s painfully formulaic and has little to do with the title character.

The other brand of mini-game does at least involve searching for Wally/Waldo and his accomplices, but instead of giving you a massive screen packed with detail you have to make do with a tiny postage-stamp sized display to investigate. As a result these particular challenges are insultingly easy.

The game is divided into three main sections. Practice is pretty much what you would expect it to be; you can tackle the various games at will but your best score (each event is played against the clock) is not recorded for posterity.

Challenge mode is the core portion of the game and is made up of a set of random events. To advance your rating (which starts at ‘Waldo Watcher’) you have to successfully complete these challenge without losing once. If you do mess up, you have to start again from the beginning.

Classic mode is as close as you’re going to get to the original books, but the botched interface makes even this mode hopelessly inadequate.

It’s possible to use either the trackball or the touchscreen but the latency between your input and the game recognising it is depressingly large. This clunky feeling is compounded by the jerky animation – just moving from one screen to another causes the game to almost grind to a halt.

Where’s Waldo? is a classic example of how not to utilise a beloved franchise. No doubt many will download this on the strength of the brand alone, but this is one case where nostalgia is a hindrance to good judgement rather than a guide.