This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Dan and Sally are excited because Christmas is approaching and they may get to see Santa Claus! What presents will he give them? Meanwhile back at the North Pole Santa and his elves are busy preparing presents for this seasonal year. Help Santa get everything in order in time for Christmas so the kids can get a Christmas they’ll never forget!
The original Christmas Wonderland (2010) felt like a lesson in mediocrity with repetitive gameplay, no real story and limited gameplay time. Surprising as well considering the game was developed by the successors to Amiga developers Flair Software. The sequel Christmas Wonderland 2 (2011) by Virtual Playground isn’t in any way a huge improvement although it’s a little more tolerable than the original game. This time around rather than find the twelve days of Christmas we have to find items that make up the Christmas Nativity. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps Santa is related to Jesus and is helping out an old buddy. I was struggling to find some type of plot since there really isn’t. Sure, there’s two kids called Dan and Sally but they seem almost completely detached from everything else that occurs in the game. It doesn’t help Virtual Playground give them and their mother these freakishly large, frozen smiles that makes them look like something out of a Child’s Play movie.
The game does show some ambition over the original in having more locations. Santa gets out of the North Pole, flying at one point to New York to take requests at a Grotto. It looks nice although I have to wonder what kind of arrangement Santa has with the Mall to just turn up unannounced. The music is appropriately festive but the graphics still lack sharpness at times. The puzzles are pretty easy; the whole thing was obviously designed for children. The game also suffers from a common issue of HOGs where objects don’t register sometimes when you click on them. It’s very frustrating. The last puzzle in the game has you using the Nativity items collected to put them back in place like a jigsaw however the game amazingly requires you to use the Space key to rotate an object. Having to control a HOG with both a mouse and a keyboard is unacceptable, especially when most games that require rotating objects use the right mouse button. It’s a very strange and poor bit of programming.
While the length of the game isn’t any different compared to the original Christmas Wonderland 2 is a slight improvement with more varied locations and things to do plus some unintentional comedy. Having said that, the issues that plagued the first game still exist plus a couple of new ones. It still feels like the developers made a rather laboured attempt at a Christmas game without putting any real effort into making something interesting. Less coal please Virtual Playground.… Expand
