TellTale Games’ Wallace & Gromit: The Last Resort is the second of four games in the Grand Adventure series that involve the creative inventor Wallace and his trusty canine sidekick Gromit. Though the episodes share many similarities, gaming experiences are entirely different.

As in most good stories, Wallace & Gromit: The Last Resort begins with a problem that must be solved: The basement of Wallace’s house is flooding due to some leaky pipes. Gromit is called in to save the day, and the player navigates his way around to assist in repairs. When all is safe, Wallace promises Gromit a trip to the beach, but a horrible storm is brewing. Ever the resourceful one, Wallace starts a mission to secure the necessary items to transform the flooded basement into a top-quality resort for all in the area of West Wallaby Street.

The Last Resort introduces a few new characters, including a burly Duncan McBiscuit and two vicious little show dogs, Poodgie-Woo and Tinkie-Wee, all of which center around Wallace’s neighbor Felicity Flitt. Though Wallace speaks with all characters from Fright of the Bumblebees, including Mr. Paneer, Constable Dibbins, Major Crum and Edwina Gabberly, it is up to Gromit to solve the mystery of the game.

That’s right, the game. Singular. For those who played the first installment of this series (or at least read my review), you will immediately recognize one massive difference between the two: a lack of minigames. My absolute favorite aspect of Fright of the Bumblebees was the variety of minigames to play, and well, The Last Resort, for all its water, left me high and dry. There is no shooting batter guns, no remote-controlling a robotic mouse to behave in certain ways in front of the constable and no word games to insult Mr. Gabberly. The entire second installment of the Wallace & Gromit: Grand Adventures series is not so grand and is rather bland.

What TellTale attempts to pass off as minigames in The Last Resort is more of numerous wrong answers in a series of multiple choice scenarios. From the moment the crime is committed, you know exactly who did it but are forced to walk around the house and listen to painfully long stretches of dialogue to progress events to a point of being able to reveal the criminal(s). This is another difference in the games: the length of characters’ speech. The Last Resort truly resorts to telling you much more about what is happening than allowing you to play. As a writer, I am usually all for expansive bits of narration or dialogue that allow the story to shine, but I think it is paramount to keep the audience in mind and remember that this is an interactive medium, not a film or book. I personally feel what this team excelled in the first game, they forgot about in this one: seamlessly integrating characters and a world that has until now existed solely on TV and film into an interactive game.

Again, it’s not that the voice acting is bad — by all means, quite the opposite — it’s that if I had to listen to Felicity Flitt for hours on end talk about her dogs, I would be in a padded room before sunset. The idea that she’s the annoying type who cares for her dogs more than anything else is portrayed quickly enough, so why does TellTale make us endure hearing her drone on and on? Again, here is the helpful tip of pressing the Shift key to bypass sections of dialogue.

After a great deal of pointing out differences between the first and second installments of this series, I will say The Last Resort maintains the superb and intuitive gameplay design I witnessed in Fright of the Bumblebees. The music, textures and environment are just as great as the first, which was a highlight for me and what made me want to review this second game. I even enjoyed picking out the differences in the layout between the games, such as the front lawn missing the shed where the lawnmower robot was stored in the first game. Nothing too drastic and obviously on purpose, but it provided a bit of a meta-game for the continuity editor in me. If anything, TellTale can only be faulted for far exceeding expectations with its first installment of the series, thus casting a great shadow in which The Last Resort finds itself.

I am still very interested in seeing the next two games in this series and would recommend to anyone to find a way to play this game. Buy it, don’t expect it to take you as long as the first to beat and enjoy it. Again, for fans of Wallace & Gromit, this is a must-have.