I’ve been a huge Wallace & Gromit/Aardman Animation fan since I first saw The Wrong Trousers as a kid randomly on PBS and have loved all the other entries in the series, from the other shorts to Curse of the Were-Rabbit. So it should go without saying that I was extremely excited for the charming duo’s first foray into VR, The Grand Getaway, which is out now on Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro from Astrea, Aardman, AtlasV and No Ghost Studio.
In The Grand Getaway, Wallace (Ben Whitehead), Gromit, their AI companion BERYL (Miriam Margolyes), who appeared in the game The Big Fix-Up, and Wallace’s latest creation, Auto-Caddy, a robotic golf bag, are heading out for a holiday to hit the links and relax away from West Wallaby St. and decide to take their rocket ship to make the journey. As with most things Wallace & Gromit, things go awry and the duo ends up heading into deep space and crash land on Mars. Wallace is, as always, charmingly oblivious so it’s up to BERYL, Gromit, and Auto-Caddy to gather needed supplies and get the group back home. The game is a narrative experience where you progress through the story and complete different puzzles and challenges before moving on to the next segment. You need to do things like complete repairs and get the rocket ready for liftoff, complete a musical challenge, or participate in a shooting gallery. There’s a good variety to what you are doing in each segment and you get to play at various points as Wallace, Gromit, and Auto-Caddy. Auto-Caddy, since it’s a robot, has more diverse functions and can do things like scan the environment and extend its arms to grab objects that are further away. One complaint though is that the difficulty seems to be all over the place regarding the challenges. The aforementioned shooting gallery was a frustrating experience where you have to hit a certain amount of targets to allow Wallace to continue his golf adventure but there’s no indicator of how many targets you need to get and the gun doesn’t feel great to use in VR and it takes a while for it to get up to speed for rapid fire, which is essential to success. Even just having a counter telling you how many targets you hit and how many you have left would have alleviated some of the frustration. After finally completing that challenge, the next challenge is an almost absurdly easy musical game. Overall, most of what you are doing is extremely charming and fun but there could have been a bit more balance as far as the actual challenge of each minigame. After you complete each minigame, you can play your favorites anytime in the game’s Bonus menu.
One thing that The Grand Getaway nails is the tone and look of Wallace & Gromit. Much like the experience of Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual from 2021, the first time you find yourself actually in West Wallaby St. with Wallace and Gromit in scale in front of you is a magical moment after seeing them on a flat screen for years on TV. The writing is excellent and perfectly in line with everything you love about the series, especially Wallace’s naive observations about their holiday locale and BERYL’s encouragement for your progression through the story. The music is also excellent and what you’ve come to expect from the series. If you’re a long-time Wallace & Gromit fan like I am, just getting to step into that world and see these characters life-size in front of you and getting to interact with them is absolutely worth the price of admission.
Along with the main story, The Grand Getaway also features the mixed reality game Jamtastic, which sees you trying to shoot bits of toast with a jam gun to test one of Wallace’s contraptions. Unfortunately, I don’t have a large enough space where I do my VR activities to be able to play Jamtastic and it is definitely a feature more geared toward owners of the Meta Quest 3 and Pro, as they both feature full-color passthrough to allow you to see the room you are in while wearing the headset. I still have a Quest 2, so the passthrough would be black & white anyway but from everything I’ve seen, it seems like a fun addition to the main game.
The Grand Getaway features all the charm, humor, and creativity you’ve come to expect from Wallace & Gromit and it’s a fun adventure to play through for the around 2 hours or so it takes to complete the story. There could have been a bit more balance to the difficulty of some of the minigames but other than that, this is a must-play for fans of Wallace & Gromit and just charming VR narrative adventures in general.
