This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Mike and Mary are getting ready for Christmas. Santa Claus has promised them all the things on their wish list. Try out new puzzles. Search for candy canes and the twelve days of Christmas. Solve puzzles and play activities from jigsaws to colouring in. Help the kids search for presents at the store by using points collected to buy toys and household appliances. You also need to help Santa Claus deliver presents around the world in time. Help make Christmas the best it’s ever been!
Have they no shame? That’s what I was thinking after playing Christmas Wonderland 4 (2013). It was a lazy game. There was no plot as though Virtual Playground didn’t care anymore. It was a game bereft of ideas and going through the motions. Even some of the screens were reused but the fact it was sold for the normal price just felt wrong. Christmas Wonderland 5 (2014) isn’t the huge improvement the series needed yet the changes in gameplay make it better than the previous year’s effort. Right away St. Nick is at the kid’s house; there’s no “maybe we’ll meet Santa this year” plot to setup. I guess he should know them quite well, having encountered them over four previous games. The kids also get to annoy their grandparents this time around, I’m sure they’re pleased. The rest of the plot is the same mundane nothingness of the kids going to the shops to find their presents while Santa journeys around the world delivering them yet the gameplay has been given a much needed facelift. Typically you get a hidden object screen and then a puzzle although it varies. In each hidden object screen there are bonus items you need to find. You’ll need to find not only all the candy canes in a screen but also find items from the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Whether it’s angels, doves, etc you need to find the item via a silhouette provided. If the player does a good job of finding all of these things while not using the built in hint system you not only get a three star ranking but also get a full score of points. The points you collect throughout the game aren’t just a score but can be used to buy items in the game’s shop. The game has a shelf and by gum you’re going to buy all the stuff from the shop to fill the space up. Transferring the contents of a department store to your house has a little fun playability and in a game as boring as this you’ll take anything. What I liked about this entry also is each hidden object screen takes place over an advent calendar. I can’t forget to mention there’s an achievements system included although I’ll be damned if I can trigger some of them to activate. I know I did them but some just don’t want to show complete. The puzzles are not much different in variety since the fourth game although there’s a little more variety. Unfortunately you’re still required at one point to build a part of America via jigsaw pieces. Didn’t the developers learn not to do that after the previous game???
I wouldn’t in any way say Christmas Wonderland 5 is a massive step in improvement over the fourth game. The plot is still nowhere to be found. However this fifth entry does introduce new gameplay elements that while easy to get through still provide a challenge that extends the gameplay time. The nicest thing that can be said about the game is that it provides something a bit fresh to do and when you have a game with zero story that ends up being a positive. Virtual Playground are big into recycling backgrounds and music so let me recycle a previous review outro by saying Christmas Wonderland 5 both lacks ambition and is mediocre, worthy of coal.… Expand
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