G4TV

Three cheers for truth in advertising. The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game does indeed contain Charlie and he does indeed run around a chocolate factory. But we’d be hard pressed to call this monstrosity a game.

Moldy Golden Ticket

It’s not like we expect games based on movies to be great, although we’ve been proven wrong a couple of times in the past. And the premise of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory certainly appears compelling enough.
 
You play as Charlie Bucket. It seems the other kids in your Golden Ticket entourage are mucking things up badly in Wonka’s factory.  It’s up to you to get the factory running smoothly and save those other horrible kids from themselves.

With the help of Oompa Loopas and some fairly benign “candy powers” you set about fixing the various wacky machines Wonka has created to churn out his chocolately confections. What follows is a 50/50 mix of 3D platforming and puzzle-solving that’s 100 percent rotten.

Controlling Interest

The game controls are immediately annoying. Charlie moves well enough, but the jumping controls are stiff and unforgiving. Many of the jumping puzzles would be a piece of cake in any other platformer, but in this game they are just plain frustrating.

Compounding the problem is an atrocious 3D camera that incessantly pops and jitters around the on-screen obstacles. You can take manual control the camera with the right analog stick, but it doesn’t help that much. And annoyingly enough, the default camera controls are inverted both horizontally and vertically even though in the options screen camera inversion is set to “off.” Push left, you look right.  Push up, you look down. You can switch it to normal by turning camera inversion “on.”  That’s just par for the course in this game.

Chuck Rock Candy

Other controls are just as sloppy. Charlie has the ability to throw Everlasting Gobstoppers and other special candies. You can either fire these off freeform or lock onto objects and enemies. The lock-on works ok, but it’s hard to get it to target the thing you want to hit.

Charlie can also order Oompa Loompas around, but actually getting them to follow the orders is hit or miss. Either they’ll ignore you, or they’ll get lost, or they’ll get stuck on the terrain and just run in place. All of these control issues destroy most of the enjoyment you might get from the game.

Vexing Confections

The conceptual design of the various puzzles is solid enough, but they don’t always come off in the technical execution. There's a puzzle early on where Charlie has to get the Oompa Loompas to fix a bunch of machines. After fixing everything in sight and then setting the Oompa Loompas off to operate the remaining machines, one machine remains broken. Only after calling the Oompa Loompas back and reassigning them does the machine suddenly fix itself.

Often the animations of these characters and the environment appear to be at war with one another. If Charlie has to pick something up, he’ll step forward a couple of paces as he’s lifting the object. But if the object is near a thorn covered floor, Charlie will step right onto it, drop the object, and lose some health. Other odd things like that happen all throughout the game making the puzzle aspect of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory more trouble than it’s worth.

Finally, there’s a whole candy collection aspect to the game that’s never satisfactorily explained or developed. You have a bunch of seemingly random candies to collect. While some have a purpose, other just kind of get added to your inventory to access bonus content later on.

Rotten Candy

The setting for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory should arguably be one of visual splendor.  Be it the original movie adaptation, Burton’s modern take, or Dahl’s text, there’s a lot of great stuff happening.  And none of it gets adequately translated to this video game.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is visually drab and technically uninspiring.  The dull, spartan environments look like they belong in a cheap, first generation Xbox game.

There’s no sense of wonder or whimsy as you traverse the levels. Nothing in the game looks awe-inspiring, and for a game based on a magical chocolate factory, that’s a pretty big faux pas.

Junk Food

The underlying concept is sound, but almost every step of the technical execution is inexcusably bad.  Don’t buy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Don’t play it. Save your pennies and buy a crate of Zagnut bars instead.