Herberts Dummy Run

Copyright : MikroGen | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Herbert was visiting a large department store with his Mum and Dad (Wally and Wilma!) when he got lost! Now the store is a scary place and full of beasts that will hurt Herbert and make him cry! Help Herbert to explore the store, manipulating the objects he finds to help him get into the lost children office where Wally and Wilma are waiting for him.

Herbert?s Dummy Run is the third in the Wally Week series.

Graphics

A marriage of the styles used in both of the previous games, Herbert?s Dummy Run combines the improved graphics and colours of Everyone?s a Wally and merges them with some of the more wacky design ideas from Pyjamarama - both of which were viewed as the games? original strengths.

In this sense, Herbert is the most attractive game in the series thus far and the sprites are very well designed removing a frustrating identification problem that occasionally blighted the earlier games whilst maintaining the big, bold sprites that became a hallmark of the series.

Certainly the strongest part of the package, Herbert?s Dummy Run plays as smoothly as it looks, with virtually no slowdowns and smooth sprite movements. There?s little you could imagine that would improve the graphics of the game.

Sound

A neat rendition of ?Baby Face? (as in, you?ve got the cutest little?) plays on the title screen. Fairly nice and inoffensive, the tune sets the scene well for the game. Unfortunately there is no music in the game instead there is only the now familiar sound effects which appear in all of the games. Effective but not startling.

Gameplay

If you played any of the other Wally Week games then you?ll know exactly what to expect - fiendishly difficult puzzles and compulsive arcade action. Having said that, Herbert?s Dummy Run is undoubtedly the weakest in the series. Wheras Pyjamarama gets away with a lot thanks to its surreal setting and its originality, Herbert comes across as a deliberate attempt to recreate the game with better graphics and trickier puzzles.

This is in itself not a bad thing but when you consider that Everyone?s a Wally took the genre and the series that much further by implementing multi-character controls and the like, Herbert seems like an unnecessary step backwards to more simplistic gameplay. It?s hard to get too enthusiastic for this reason and despite the nice touches (the breakout sub-game is inspired), there is a real sense of déjà vu about proceedings.

Having said that, Herbert?s Dummy Run is still a cut above most other arcade adventures in terms of design and clever touches, it is merely a dissapointment when put into context with the other games, taken as an independent piece of work, Herbert is as fun and tricky as you would expect and will take a long time to crack.