'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. However someone didn’t tell Santa'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. However someone didn’t tell Santa Claus this. On Christmas Eve he must travel around The North Pole picking up the scattered items belonging to the twelve days of Christmas otherwise without those elements Father Christmas wouldn’t be able to deliver presents to the children. Indeed without your help instead of “ho ho ho” it’ll be “oh oh oh”!
Whenever I review a game after completing it I always love researching the company behind a game to see what other credits they have to their name. Interestingly with Christmas Wonderland (2011) and its many sequels developers Virtual Playground (or depending on the team Casual Arts) actually originate from a more notable company; one during the Amiga days. Virtual Playground to my surprise is originally Flair Software! For those not in the know Flair Software was a rather prolific developer for the Amiga coming out with games such as Oscar (1993), Trolls (1992) (my personal favourite), Whizz (1994) as well as famous for their numerous games with the Elvira licence. They were also responsible for Dangerous Streets (1994) although perhaps we should forget about that one. Unfortunately like many developers from the 16bit days they failed to transition successfully over to the 32bit era of gaming. It seems as Virtual Playground their destiny of time of writing is to continue making cheap casual games for the mobile and handheld market along with making endless Christmas Wonderland games. The Final Fantasy series for instance sure has nothing over these games. I can just imagine this conversation where someone tells another person “Christmas Wonderland 3 is so much better than Final Fantasy 3”. Yeah actually on second thoughts I don’t think that conversation will happen any time soon...
The game predictably plays like any other HOG with hidden objects to find, memory games, jigsaw puzzle games and spot the difference. Occasionally you’ll find an item from the twelve days of Christmas and a bit of the song relating to that item will play. The whole game is very uneventful and unexciting as it doesn’t try to be ambitious enough. There isn’t much of a story or pace to the game so while it is in a sense truly casual it’s also truly boring. Even with a variety of different game types it somehow still feels inadequate. The game is also way too short with the game taking perhaps an hour to finish. Not much longevity here.
Unsurprisingly for a festive seasonal tie-in game Christmas Wonderland lacks depth and anything interesting. Its length is too short and repetitive to be enjoyed. The game to its credit isn’t broken but the developers who were once Flair Software are capable of much better than this than turning out the HOG equivalent of Dangerous Streets. Lacks ambition and mediocre, worthy of coal.… Expand
