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Spiderwick Chronicles is a video game based on the theatrical release by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Films. The five books — “The Field Guide,” “The Seeing Stone,” “Lucinda's Secret,” “The Ironwood Tree” and “The Wrath of Mulgarath” — were written by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. Even though the books were for children, I found them an enjoyable fantasy diversion.

I just finished the game by getting to the top of the tower ahead of the ogre. The entire roof sequence is arcade, as is most of the game. My 24-year-old son Michael had to help me with the arcade sequences.

I really like the game. The art, the story, the way the story was told, the music, the characters and even the fighting scenes are done very well. The interface does have a learning curve, but it is gentle and doesn't overtax. I found the game to be simply wonderful.

The plot of the game is similar to the plot in the film. Boy finds book about fairies. Boy opens book and opens a world of fairies to his family. The world of fairies is both wonderful and dangerous.

Boss fairy, specifically an evil ogre, wants book to take over the world for evil. Family battles ogre and evil fairy minions to keep book and world safe. Family wins. The end.

The plot of the film is slightly different from the plot of the books. In the books, the final showdown with the ogre Mulgarath occurred at the Spiderwick estate. In the film, the showdown is at Mulgarath's castle. The tunnel under the estate to town exists only in the film and the game. Simon and Jared were 9-years-old in the books, but since the actor that portrayed them was actually 15 when the film was shot, the twins appear older.

The game is similar to a graphic adventure in that it has puzzles to solve. You need to go around the estate, the quarry and the castle to find items to collect. Then you use the items in specific ways.

One puzzle involves making a weapon from a large, empty soda bottle, a nozzle, a length of pipe, tomatoes, vinegar, salt, oatmeal and a bicycle pump. You have to know that the workbench upstairs is required to make the item. You also have to know to use the twin brother who is good at crafting.

The Grace family characters move into the old Spiderwick estate after their mother is divorced. The characters include a mother and her three children (older sister Mallory and younger twin brothers Jared and Simon), the father Arthur Spiderwick, Aunt Lucinda and a whole bunch of different fairies.

The children have interesting backgrounds and personalities. Mallory is a fencing champion complete with a medal. Jared is athletically gifted and courageous in the face of danger. Simon is more of a nerd and good at making things. According to an interview with game developers at Sierra, Senior Vice President Sandi Isaacs and Vice President of Interactive & Mobile Production at Paramount Pictures Harry Lang were extremely helpful in making this game come to life. They were able to supply many character model assets from the movie production teams to Stormfront Studios, which gave the developer more time to focus on gameplay.

The animation and artwork reflect this extra effort on the part of Paramount Pictures to make the drawn animated characters in the game accurate to the film. The characters come to life on the screen, and it is just like watching the film again. Characterization is very important to me, and I was impressed.

You also play Thimbletack, a house gnome Jared befriends in the beginning of chapter two. Thimbletack's voice is played by Martin Short in the movie. In both the Thimbletack sequences, which make up about one-third of the game, you are jumping inside the walls of the old Spiderwick mansion.

Interspersed with the gameplay are video sequences from the film. The videos are short and to the point and carry the story along. The game also has animated drawn sequences. When these sequences occur, the screen becomes letterboxed by adding black lines at the top and bottom. The game control is taken away. And you must watch the animated sequence. You cannot skip the sequence by hitting the spacebar.

The game can be completed simply without unlocking the 50 miniquest game goals and locations. For example, collecting 25, 50 and 100 ball bearings gives you the title of Ball Bearing Collector, Enthusiast and Fanatic.

Combat in the game is by Jared's baseball bat, Simon's antifairy water gun, Mallory's sword and Thimbletack's throwing pins. Each character has special move that unlock by achieving certain goals in catching fairies, killing goblins or other such actions.

Keyboard-controlled cooperative mode on the same computer is very interesting. I especially like games that have a cooperative mode. This is the multiplayer selection from the front menu.

The game delivers letters at the front door of the Spiderwick mansion that announce that arenas are unlocking. These are multiplayer arenas that can be accessed in the main menu of the game. In the arenas, one or two players — playing as Jared, Mallory or Simon — can compete against each other in either sprite-capture or goblin-battle competitions in different environments.

My absolute favorite type of cooperative mode is on two networked computers with each person playing the same game. The downside to this type of cooperative mode, which Freelancer had, is that you have to buy two games to use it. Sadly, Spiderwick Chronicles does not support this type of play.

Subtitles show that the game understands the need to read and hear to fully understand the game, especially if you are hearing-challenged. The game is not dark like many modern games. Those people who are vision-challenged will not have a problem with overly dark screens. You don't have to adjust gamma to see perfectly well in all parts of the game. I love these types of wonderful vision and hearing options and features for games.

The voice acting, sound effects and music are excellent and of motion picture quality. I really enjoyed listening to these wonderful sounds. Freddie Highmore (Simon and Jared Grace), Sarah Bolger (Mallory), Mary Louise Parker (Helen Grace) and David Strathairn (Arthur Spiderwick) all reprise their roles from the movie. Stormfront Studios did the music and sound effects.

If there is a flaw in the game for me as a player, the arcade sequences would be it. Others may find the arcade parts of the game a plus. There is a lot of jumping and catching fairies, over and over.

I would have preferred an optional transportation or teleportation system (to get around once you visited a location) and an optional automatic fairy catcher (that does not require you catching fairies more than once). Once you catch the fairies, it would be simpler if you had a menu selection screen for them. Then you would not need to catch them again.

Repeating things over and over — especially those that require arcade-like reactions — annoys me. Others may find this aspect of the game challenging and fun. The catching more than the jumping is annoying to me because it takes a while to remember where you found the fairies. Once you remember where the fairies are, you have to hunt for them because they move around. Once you locate the type of fairy you need, catching the fairy might be difficult or impossible under some situations and for some people — such as me.

I don't believe you can catch the fairy that jumps around in many places in the game. So far, I have been unable to catch the jumping guy. I finally figured out how to make the stray sod dizzy. The character does not run in circles easily using the AWSD keys like most games use. Running in circles was difficult for me. When you make the stray sod dizzy, paths open to you that are essential to the game, so you have to keep working on it.

The jumping sequences in the platform game, such as those in Prince of Persia, arcade challenge areas were tough for me to do, but they are doable and therefore more satisfying than annoying the first time through. Repeating the jumping sequences over and over can get tedious. In this case, I did not find the jumping platform game sequences tedious, just a little challenging, except for the troll chase tunnels.

In the troll chase in the tunnels at the end of chapter four of the game, I had to repeat the sequence about 100 times until I asked Michael to do the sequence for me. Arcade sequences are nice, but after you fail these arcade sequences over and over, they become so frustrating that you want to smash your monitor with a brick. Game designers need to learn from the past. Once someone has repeated a sequence over and over, an option to bypass the sequence should be presented.

The difficulty of the jumping sequences of the troll chase in the tunnels at the end of chapter four comes from the slightly changing camera angles and the cursor control of the character that makes you use the AWSD directional buttons to control direction of movement. It is very easy to mix up the direction of the jump since you must memorize the key presses needed to stay ahead of the troll and not get caught.

If the game kept the camera behind the character throughout the arcade sequence, the player might find the sequence easier. At the beginning of the arcade sequence, the computer takes over the camera control and prevents the player from changing it. The angles and view make it difficult to see what is happening clearly.

In all fairness to the developers, Michael did the arcade sequence, the troll tunnel chase, in just two tries. He told me that the problem was the camera angle for which he had to compensate to do the jumps. Just keep the character moving in the direction he is supposed to go, and do not stop, Mike further advised. Mike concluded by saying that using an Xbox controller with an analog joystick to control Jared might make controlling him a bit easier.

My son even had problems jumping off the many platforms in the tunnel below the Spiderwick house and in the final sequence — when you try to turn around or when the character seems to be facing one way and is really facing the opposite way. The character has to walk in a circle to turn around. The game has an automatic jumping feature that causes you to automatically jump when you come to a precipice. This combination of turning and automatic jumping causes you to jump into thin air, drop to the ground and die. You are then forced to reboot the game and start the sequence from the last checkpoint.

The game uses outdated console save points (called checkpoints in the game). Now that consoles have hard drives, there is no need to use the old save points to save space on memory cards. PC-like saves at any point can now be used in console games in addition to auto saves at save points. This is a good thing. Due to changes in technology, designers seem to be hard-wired into using save points on games that can save at any time.

I could only find one save in the game. The new save saves right over top of the old save. I was disappointed that I could not save the game and later show my friends and family cool things from the game.

If you don't like arcade sequences, you might not like the game — buy or rent the movie instead. If you have fast reflexes and a lot of patience, this just might be the game for you.

I wish to thank those at Sierra and Paramount Pictures that gave me a bit more insight into this title. By the way, Thimbletack is the key to unlocking the sword in the attack that Mallory can use to improve her attacks.