Coraline started life as a book by Neil Gaiman, one of the UK's greatest writers in the comic book and novel world. As is the current trend, any comic or book is being snapped up by Hollywood to convert it to celluloid, thankfully it turned out to be a great imaging capturing Gaimans dark fairytale feel similar to the great Brothers Grimm and Roald Dahl stories.

 

 

The game, just like the film captures the very dark feel, with a very haunting intro involving a doll being taken apart and remade. Coraline, the heroine of the game is a lonely girl who has just moved into a new house (the Pink Palace), her parents really don't care for her as they are very busy so she is left to investigate the house on her own. At first she meets the very strange neighbours and after a while she comes across a mysterious door that leads to an alternate world where her family care for her, but all is not as it seems.

 

Whilst the story is great and original, the game is not. It is a mix of adventure and mini games, you move Coraline around the grounds of the house, occasionally talking to characters who offer you tasks like finding and collecting items or mini games like shooting with your slingshot or parlour games like ball and cup or go fish.

 

Controlling Coraline is very easy with movement being assigned to the L stick. Each interactive item is well signposted and as you approach a menu they will appear in the top right advising what button to press with the options usually being things like pick up, pull or climb. Though the controls are simple the camera causes all sorts of problems as it is fixed in each room, so each time you walk into a room you need to realign the controls. Games such as Resident Evil had to use a fixed position due to system restraints but in this case it just feels like a it has been rushed to enable it to be released at the same time as the movie.

 

 

Whilst the gameplay is sub par, the character animations and voice acting are pretty much perfect, with voices returning from the film itself and some amusing and well designed characters.

 

Coraline could have been a fun game but the over use of fetch quests and a startlingly short playtime makes this one to avoid.