Wall-E is another movie tie-in that, while posing a few interesting mechanics, doesn't really do a whole lot to stand out.

Visually, the game is okay. While on Earth, the landscape is full of browns and desolate looking with piles of trash all around you. All-in-all, the Earth-based levels have a decidedly barren look to them and the game does a pretty good job of conveying the wasteland that was left for Wall-E to clean up. Meanwhile, aboard the Axiom, everything is stark white and very clean. Unfortunately, in both worlds, the levels themselves tend to blend together, so all the Axiom levels look like other Axiom levels and the same thing goes for the Earth-based levels.

Interestingly enough, the game's audio is pretty good. As soon as Wall-E starts up, the background music is "Put on your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly! (but in a slowed-down, almost broken manner), a song prominently used in the movie, and it definitely has the same feel, and it is just as unnerving too. The rest of the audio, including Eve and Wall-E's "Dialogue" and the various sound effects seem to be dead on.

Wall-E takes its cues from both the Action/Platformer and Shooter genres. While controlling the little wheeled robot, you will roll around crushing trash into cubes in order to solve various puzzles as well as navigate hazards, both environmental and enemy-based. While as Eve, you will fly around the level trying to take care of various objectives, and shooting things you don't like with your laser.

The game follows the movie's plot fairly closely. All of the major events from Wall-E's time alone on Earth, to his discovery of the plant and Eve, to his adventures on the spaceship Axiom are all present. While people who have seen the movie will get more out of it than those that haven't, the story should be enjoyable either way.

The story's premise isn't all that farfetched. After years of polluting, humans have decided to pack up and head to space. The company that owns everything, Buy N Large, has manufactured a series of small robots called Wall-E units to clean up, and once life is once again sustainable, humans will return and repopulate the Earth.

Fast forward some 700 years and all but one of the Wall-E units have wasted away. Our star goes about his daily tasks crushing and organizing the trash, but it seems that he has also developed a bit of a personality as well. He longs for companionship and when a spaceship appears and deposits a sleek, white robot named Eve, he falls in love. Eventually, Eve will find the one plant that has managed to survive on Earth and signal to be picked up. Wall-E will hitch a ride back to the human home base and his adventures on the Axiom will change the way the humans have gone about their business for 700 years.

Wall-E doesn't really have much in the way of difficulty. If you want to nab all of the collectibles from each level, then it will probably take a few tries, but really, getting through the story itself isn't all that bad. Quite frankly, the hardest part was dealing with Eve, and I really did cringe every time I had to pilot her. But eventually, you do get used to her unintuitive controls scheme and even get past that hurdle. Wall-E doesn't offer a whole lot of hours of gameplay, and if you are just getting through it to see the story, you should be able to beat the game over a weekend, if not less.

Wall-E's controls are a bit iffy. When talking about Wall-E himself, I never had a problem... well that isn't exactly true. Early on, I would get his throw action confused with his jump command, but since there were rarely any enemies or pressing events during those early levels, I mostly chalked it up to the normal learning curve. Eve's controls, on the other hand, took much longer to get used to.

Eve is essentially stuck to the center of the screen. In order to move her, you use the left stick, basically turning the camera rather than Eve. From there, if you want her to speed up, you tap the (A) button, while (B) will apply the brakes. (X) fires her weapon and (Y) performs her power surge move, but I didn't have a problem with those. It was mostly the navigational controls that were an issue. The system didn't feel right. Instead of giving me controls to move vertically and horizontally with both sticks and (A) and (B) being forward and backwards, if you want to gain altitude, you have to look up and hold (A), if you want to lower, then point downwards. The problem with this is that you can't really move straight up or down, you are always moving forward and that caused me hit walls many times. It was really frustrating and took a while to get used to. While I feel like I've seen this control scheme before, I also seem to remember not liking it then either.

Wall-E isn't a bad game. It has all the right mechanics and covers its movie's plot fairly well. If you are looking for the next great thing, then you will want to pass. But if you are just looking for some trash-compacting fun or you really enjoyed the movie, then Wall-E is probably worth the rent, but not necessarily a purchase.