1/5 ★ – administrator's review of Where's Waldo?.

Trash game. This is a NES game that I played late at night, emulated on android, thanks to the great LordChozo on patientgamers, who has a very similar opinion on it. My opinion? It's terrible. Just don't. In fact, don't even bother reading the rest of this review. Still here? Okay, you must like Where's Wally/Waldo. As you undoubtedly know, the whole point of Where's Wally/Waldo is searching for and being able to recognise him hidden in a picture containing a lot of distracting details. The NES just can't do this. The pixel density/resolution and colour variation just isn't there to accommodate the entire point of the Wally/Waldo idea, so right off the bat this seems like an entirely unfeasible idea. And oh look, what a suprise, it is exactly that. When you start the game and pick a difficulty, you're shown a timer, and there's something about a ticket to the moon? Anyway, you get 10 minutes on the timer on easy mode, which I did, and screw trying the other difficulties. The timer starts ticking down, and doesn't stop. After five or so seconds (or if you press a button) you progress to the next screen, which is a really poor world map with Wally/Waldo automatically ambling along to the first area, with no player control to guide him on a more sensible and efficient path nor does he have any sense of urgency. You arrive at the train station. This is your first scene to find him within. Yay. Each time this or any one of the distinctively shit scenes loads, a really shoddy and often broken representation of Wally/Waldo is placed somewhere mostly random in the scene. It's so bad. Sometimes his legs are blue, sometimes red. Sometimes he doesn't have any legs at all, sometimes they blend into the background. Your job is to find the twelve pixels that are most likely to be Wally/Waldo in amongst the blocks of other people like pixel globs and move an astonishingly fast moving, barely visible yet flashing square over him and hit A. If you miss (which is likely given the targeting square truly does move surprisingly fast at the slightest touch - an emulator/emulation issue perhaps), or you're just wrong, an additional block of time is deducted from your ever running countdown. If that countdown goes to zero, you start the game again right from the beginning. No lives, no checkpoints, just back to the difficulty selection screen after some temperature gauge thing fills up to the level you go to. Oh, and by the way, that overworld map you saw, with Wally/Waldo walking across it really slowly? You know, the one where you're input does nothing and you just have to watch him amble along leisurely? Your countdown timer was ticking then too, and you could do nothing at all about it. Bye bye, precious seconds. So you get through the train station scene, and the (horribly red for some reason) Forest scene, and find yourself in the cave. Which is almost completely black. Your job, which you don't know, because the game doesn't tell you this, is to now to press A when your square, which operates like like a torch now, is over Wally/Waldo, except you can't see him most of the time and he's running around like his arse is on fire. I guess he's lost and afraid of the dark? Get your reaction speed ready and hope that he randomly sprints under your cross hairs and lights up! If you managed to get lucky, you now control Wally/Waldo for the only time in the game and need to move him to a small white square to exit to the overworld. But wait, there's another square with an hourglass in it! If you're a gambler (and let's face it, you must be to play this) you can move Wally/Waldo to this hourglass and maybe get an extra minute of time in the countdown timer! Or maybe you'll lose a minute. Who knows! Good luck! If you make it through the cave, you'll have another two scenes to find our beloved and well mangled Wally/Waldo - the fairground and the city. Surprisingly easy actually. But don't be fooled, because next up is... The Subway. Fuck the subway. All the way. This is a maze level, where you're a tiny little dildo (I assume this interpretation is compatible with the lore?) and have to travel through a randomly generated maze that... Sort of resembles a subway map if it was drawn by someone with dementia who could only use 45 degree angles. You can't just make your way through this maze, oh no. You also need to touch the Wally/Waldo square as well as his glasses, which have been randomly placed within the maze, then reach the end. But upon your laurels you shall not rest, for there's one more thing to worry about. You know the wizard, the one from the books? Wizard Whitebeard? That cheerful friendly dude who's all helpful and nice and stuff? Turns out he's actually a time vampire or something who can teleport randomly on the subway. Niche skillset, but it sure shines here. You should hope and pray that he does not teleport to the tile you occupy, for the seconds will drain away from your probably already limited timer rapidly. As in, at a rate of about 180 seconds per second. That's right, you'll lose three minutes of your time (which was only 10 minutes on easy mode, don't forget!) for every second Wizard Whitebeard straddles your dildo-self. I wonder what he's doing to you. By the way, pro tip here in giving away for free, you can press B to slightly change the tile you're looking at, as long as it's not one full of straight lines. The game doesn't tell you this of course. Anyway, if lady luck was on your side your little dildo made it out of dementia subway and found itself back in the shoes of Wally/Waldo, you will once again watch him on the overworld map taking a leisurely stroll to the next scene, The Castle, which is another very easy scene. How come the most difficult scenes were right at the start? After speed finding several Wally/Waldo-esque pixels you will find yourself at... Drum roll please... Launch Bay. As everyone knows, rocket launches (because we're going to the moon, remember?) are initiated by winning a slot machine mini game, so it's only right that the last stage is exactly that. In the Where's Waldo game. Yeah. These slots suck total unwashed butt though, once the three... Uhm, spinny things are spinning (I'm not going to look the name of those bits up for this game, it's barely even worth this review) you need to click each one with a painful slow cursor to stop them on Wally/Waldo's face. If you miss, you still need to click the remaining spinning one(s) in order to reset the machine. All the while, tick tock, time is running out! Eventually you'll nail that middle one which for some reason spins like three times as fast as the other two and you'll be rewarded with a shot of the moon, with an America-centric (of course) earth in the sky. For some reason Hawaii is huge on Wally/Waldo-verse earth I guess? Anyway, a rocket descends upon the moon. Wally/Waldo exits and jumps about a bit. Wheee. Then just stands there, probably wondering why the hell Bethesda(!?) made this game and released it. And then wondering why you bothered to play it. After that, you're treated to a deliciously epileptic temperature gauge that fills up to the best temperature, "MOON", and then it's back to the difficulty selection screen. In case you want to play again. Which you don't. Unless you're me and need to make some notes for this review. What have I just wasted 35 minutes of my time for. Utter nonsense game.