WALL-E (video game)

WALL-E is the video game adaptation of the movie of the same name. The game was developed and published by Play THQ for multiple platforms. The game was released in North America on June 24, 2008, to Europe on July 4, 2008, and Australia on September 4, 2008. The game was also released in Japan on December 11, 2008, although not officially available on the Xbox 360 or any PC.

WALL-E was fairly well reviewed by critics. The game's best received version was the PSP version, which was 64 out of 100 on the Metacritic scale. Though it was highly criticized, IGN praised the PSP adaption as "... one of the most solid film to game adaptations we've seen in a while."

Marc Vulcano was Senior Animation Director for the video game. He had just left Sony Pictures Imageworks where he worked as a Senior Character Animator for films like Beowulf and others. Before he was at Imageworks he worked as an animation director and supervisor for Big Idea Productions's VeggieTales.

The PC version includes demos for the video games Ratatouille and Cars.

Gameplay
The PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 versions feature nine explorable worlds. The Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable versions feature eighteen worlds, and the Nintendo DS features fourteen explorable worlds. The Wii is the only version of the game that features 3 head-to-head multiplayer modes,[5] while the Nintendo DS version feature co-op modes playable as WALL-E or EVE. As the player plays through the levels of the Nintendo DS version, they unlock clips from the movie viewable at any time. The PlayStation 2, PSP and Windows versions allow the player to use music to summon reject bots throughout the game. The story mode seems to be altered the character's roles and different from the movie such as WALL-E can commonly use its laser, EVE is tasered by AUTO (referenced to WALL-E being tasered in the original.), WALL-E repairing EVE (in the original, EVE tries to repair WALL-E), and WALL-E survived from getting crushed by the Holo-Detector.

Reception
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii versions of the game met with reviews ranging from average to poor.[6] Reviewing the Xbox 360 version, IGN concluded that rather than buying the game, "This may be an instance where you wait for the DVD, or go see the movie again instead."[7] As of July 30, 2008, the game has sold over one million copies.[8] It was nominated as one of the "Most Surprisingly Good Game" and "Best Use of a Creative License" by GameSpot's "Best of 2008" awards, but did not win either.[9] [10]

Special Middle Eastern release
Publisher THQ, in collaboration with the Emirati company Pluto Games, had released a localized edition of the game in the Middle East, making the game the first Western video game to be officially translated into Arabic.[11] This was done as a strategy to appeal to the local gamers in their mother tongue, and commit to releasing more localized games in the region in future.[11] However, the Arabic translated edition is only available on the PlayStation 3, PSP, and Xbox 360, even though the game in general is still available on all platforms.[11] The Arabic translated edition was released on June 27, 2008 (although the film itself was released on July 3 in the region).