Updated: 13 May 2012 9:13 pm
Posted: 27 Jun 2007 12:03 am
You play as Remy, a lovable but confused rat who isn't interested in the typical rodent life. He wants to dazzle patrons with his legendary dishes, not scour garbage cans for leftover traps. So when Remy happens upon and helps a clumsy busboy prepare a great pot of soup, the human enlists his aid again and again in an attempt to stay his growing popularity in the kitchen. Remy is, of course, the brains of the outfit, but no restaurant in the world, let alone Paris, would accept a rat as its head chef. This story is introduced through pre-rendered snippets that are stylized and atmospheric, but also (for some unexplainable reason) overly compressed. This is an unnecessary shortcoming that has marred the presentational package of some Wii efforts and we'd like to see it go away. Many of the title's cinematics, however, are handled adequately through the game engine.
Ratatouille is a straightforward platformer and if you're a genre snob who holds their selections to higher standards, you might find yourself peeved with the title's general lack of originality. You explore environments, scurrying around corners when necessary. You jump on objects and tail-swipe enemies. You balance across high wires or sniff out your next objective. It's all in there, ripped directly from the Book of Platformers, if ever there was such a work. Ratatouille even includes the obligatory platformer sliding levels -- in this case Remy barrels down the insides of a giant piping system. You won't often run through a doorway into some new world or gameplay mechanic you have never seen before, which is a valid complaint.
However, innovative or not, Ratatouille is usually fun and entertaining, two truths that we attribute to tight control and smart, varied levels designs. You move Remy effortlessly through the sewer systems, city streets, kitchens and dream worlds he inhabits with the nunchuk's analog stick and can double-jump by tapping the A button. If you hold down the Z button, the screen will take on a fish-eye view, at which point you're able to sprint through an area; this mechanic feels good because it has weight and momentum; if you take a corner too sharply, you will actually go into a rat power-slide that is fully controllable. Hold B-trigger and you'll be able to see by way of a misty purple trail the path to Remy's next objective, a helpful tool for novice players. Simply traversing the environments is enjoyable because the controls are implemented intuitively and we're sure kids will really take a liking to the effort because of it. The challenges themselves, meanwhile, are never too daunting, but neither are they ridiculously easy, which fosters a smooth-moving pace.
Remy will have to catapult across chasms and outwit dogs or survive the chaos of a kitchen filled with rodent-hating cooks. The developers have helped break from the monotony of run-and-jump gameplay by breaking levels into a series of challenges from simply devising a way to get from Point A to Point B to using Remy's abilities to sneak by potential enemies or to pick up and place objects in the appropriate destination.
Unfortunately, the camera is controlled loosely by first holding the C button and then pointing to and dragging the corners of the screen with the Wii remote, a la Red Steel. It is, like Ubisoft's shooter, a slow exercise in visibility, but much more manageable in platformer situations. Other than that, the Wii remote is scarcely used. You waggle it to tail-swipe enemies and to paddle Remy's boat when he happens to be in the water, which is not often, but otherwise the controls are largely handled by the nunchuk.
Ratatouille's single-player affair is complemented by a series of mini-games, many of them specifically designed for the Wii. Some of these offerings, like the sliding levels, will be familiar to platformer fans. Others are tailored for the Wii remote. For example, in one case, you have to point at the screen and quickly select the ingredients needed for a stew. In another, you must take control of chef Linguini, guide him through the kitchen, and then dice food and peel tomatoes before time runs out. In one more still, you might have to cook crepes, using the Wii remote to tilt the frying pan left, right, up and down, and then thrusting upward when the crepe is finished in order to fling it off the saucer. These minis, which later become compatible for two and sometimes four (rotating controllers) players, help to extend the replay value of the main adventure.
Ratatouille is one of the prettier "kid games" we've seen for Wii, sporting large, stylized environments that are highly interactive. Heavy Iron and Asobo have humorously animated Remy as he runs through the locations, there are some better-than-average particle effects, and there's even bloom lighting in place, which has become the benchmark for what Wii is capable of, as sad as that may be. (So far, Metroid Prime 3's biggest technical advancement is bloom lighting, for instance.) While the levels themselves vary greatly in design, the texture work is unanimously blurry, which is the biggest disappointment. When you get up close to an object, it will sometimes seem borrowed from an N64 title, let alone GameCube. We know Wii can do more.
Verdict
The label "kid's game" is usually a license for a publisher to make a poor product and shove it out the door. However, Ratatouille is for the most part a well-made, but basic platformer that is usually fun despite its lack or originality. I don't think younger players will mind that the majority of the gameplay types included in the project have been done before or that Ratatouille doesn't floor anybody with its innovative usage of the Wii remote. They will undoubtedly enjoy this game because it capitalizes on the license, it's easily picked up and mastered and because it offers a single-player mode that flows along, not to mention a selection of multiplayer mini-games to back it up. Still, these are issues and we can't ignore them completely simply because a portion of the audience will.
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