Wall-e review

The world of Wall-e (2008) is covered in half-pipes and quarter pipes, as if designed by a committee of Thrasher magazine photographers. It is a wasteland of human detritus and dead buildings, many of which have helpfully collapsed into useful ramps and handy pathways lined by traffic cones. The afterearth of Wall-e is functionally indistinguishable from the post-apocalypse of The Last Of Us, insofar as it is a landscape of signposting and affordances. Finding an old children's toy in the dust of a failed civilisation offers a poignant moment. Good thing they sparkle to make sure you spot them.

Why am I reviewing Wall-e, a licensed Disney tie-in from the year of our dirt 2008? Well, I've been informed we're doing Wall-e week at Jank and I thought: "Weird, but okay".

To quickly enlighten you. This is a gentle children's platformer full of set pieces loosely adopted from the film. It has racing levels, gentle box-slinging puzzles, and bright diode collectioneering. There is an insufferable looping calypso track that will make you want to perforate your own eardrums. In one level you may spend a grand total of 120 seconds guiding the floating iPod called Eva away from a sandstorm while blasting incoming obstacles with lasers. In another you will be hoovering up a hundred gizmos to unlock a door. Honey, we're videogamesing. Its best levels showcase the sediment layers of game design practices over the preceding decades that have compacted to produce, finally, a semi-competent movie tie-in for nine year olds. Its worst levels are a kind of shitty Sonic.

I did not play Wall-e when it first graced the most bargainous of buckets at your local Gamestop in 2008, which has since transformed into a pawn shop that BUYS YOUR GOLD TODAY. I cannot meaningfully review it in the context of its own time - a year in which I concede Left 4 Dead, BioShock, Portal, Burnout Paradise and Mass Effect may have overshadowed it. All the flesh components of my cerebellum have long since become infected with a kind of psychic mold from the intervening history of pandemics, financial collapses, and news stories about gorillas from Cincinnati being shot in the head.