Time for the folk at West Wallaby Way to embark on the third of their four episodic Grand Adventures.

This time around however events move away from town a little further than before.




The premise in Muzzled is that the poor lost dogs of the poor lost dog’s home, are, through an unfortunate event, bereft of a home.

As a result, the towns folk, including Miss Flitt, Duncan McBiscuit, Major Crum, Mrs Gabberly, Mr Paneer, Constable Dibbins and of course Wallace and Gromit decide to band together and save the homeless mutts.

Coincidentally Monty Muzzle, the moustachioed charitable philanthropist and his traveling charity fun park turn up in town, ready to help make a buck with a bit of carnival fun, including a ride, chicken powered amusements and the opportunity for Wallace to use his new invention, the infiniflavour ice-cream truck.

Of course, it all turns out to be a bit of a con, and it is up to Wallace and his faithful hound to save the kidnapped pups, the towns-folks hard earned and put the conniving Muzzle safely behind bars.

The action centres mostly on Gromit this time around, as he wanders the streets of town, as well as the fairground in an effort to expose the villainous Muzzle, despite the stupidity and blinkeredness of the town’s people and his master.

Puzzles are stepped up a notch from The Last Resort, though game-time is not really extended at all. I guess I am saying, be prepared to be stuck from time to time, though the excellent multilevel hint system will soon have you back on track.

The AusGamer review code still suffers from the previous episodes audio issues, with some of the levels, especially the voice acting volume being out of kilter from time to time.

Muzzled also introduced a couple of minor non-game affecting graphical glitches along the journey.

It is nice that by Episode 3 that Telltale Games has changed the locations slightly, stepping out from the immediate town and West Wallaby Way to spend a large proportion within the fair-ground and as in Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees culminates in an excellently crafted chase scene.

Muzzled, unlike previous Wallace and Gromit episodes, also sets the scene for the upcoming Episode 4: The Bogey Man. On the down-side, there are fewer references to cheese than I would have liked during Muzzle.

More cheese I say!

Whilst we are on the attempted humour front, I found the laugh out loud moments in Muzzled that in the earlier episodes, but the game-play satisfaction is still here.

Plus, I guess, to make up for the lack of cheese, Telltale Games have introduced chickens, perhaps as a nod to Aardman’s feature move production Chicken Run. And let’s face it, on the comedic scale; Chickens are not much further down the list from Monkeys, Pirates and Ninja’s. So that is good.