The Spiderwick Chronicles has now made its way to the Xbox 360, yes it’s a game based on a movie, but happily it isn’t actually that bad, in fact this game draws you in and really makes for quite a satisfying adventure.  

Spiderwick is based on the story of three children, twin brothers Jared and Simon, along with their sister Mallory Grace, who embark on a perilous journey filled with adventure and danger after they find a journal, written by Arthur Spiderwick in the estate the family have been given by their Great Aunt Lucinda.

So what does it play like? Well, it’s rather good actually, there is a good mix of fighting and exploring, there are also plenty of puzzles to challenge you and the game will always keep you thinking about what is likely to happen next. Although things do start off quite slowly once you get into the action things soon pick up and as the story unfolds you will find yourself gripped.

The combat in Spiderwick is fairly basic, beating up goblins and other enemies is simply done by pressing the attack button, which results in them getting your baseball bat wrapped around their head, Jared also has access to a slingshot and will also gain new attacks later in game by collecting Goblin Teeth. Magical abilities are also available by catching Sprites, this is made possible with the aid of your net and once the sprite is captured you will then have to play a small mini game before being granted abilities such as healing or super strength. 

There are a few issues which stick out with Spiderwick, while most of the time you have a general idea of what you are doing next, sometimes you just get lost and are left scratching your head due to the game not being very specific about your next task, although this issue can be resolved by consulting your field guide, which is basically a checklist of what you have achieved so far and what have still to do, but it does become a bit tedious having to access the menu every two minutes.

Collecting items can be a frustrating part of the game, this is because no matter how many times you pass an item you will not be able to pick it up until the game decides that you can, therefore even though you will probably have spent most of you time examining items you will still have to go back and get them later in the game, although at least you will know where they are.

Another issue with the game is in the graphical department, sure it does look quite nice generally but there are quite a few flaws, the main culprit being that there is no collision detection, something which really should be included in all games these days no matter their budget. Having said this though, the cutscenes where the game moves to clips from the movie are well implemented and work surprisingly well.

Thankfully the games soundtrack is excellent and fits in really well, it adds a lot to the whole atmosphere and really helps draw you in to the adventure that is taking place. The voice acting is also fairly decent, although it is certainly nothing groundbreaking.

Spiderwick Chronicles to me is mainly aimed at children and in this respect it is a very good game, while some of it’s flaws, especially graphically, can be frustrating, if you can get by this then there is no doubt that you will be drawn in to it’s mystical adventure for long enough to think that this isn’t such a bad movie to game conversion.