Technically it IS two player... but not really
Now I'm not saying that Sierra's box for The Spiderwick Chronicles is bare-faced lying, it just bends the truth somewhat. In fact, it bends the truth just as far as it can be bent without shattering into a bloody great lie as there is a two-player game in here: you just have to dig a bloody long way to get to it. I mean, I know there's multiplayer in here, I can see it from the options screen, but it tells me I have to unlock it in the story mode.Excuse me? I have to unlock the two-player mode by playing on my own? Since when did that make any bloody sense whatsoever? Granted, for a large part of the beginning of the story I can see it'd be hard to shoehorn in a second player but that's not what the box states. It says "players 1-2", not "players 1-2... eventually". Even on checking the small print, all it tells me is how I'll need separate cables for HDTV and Dolby Digital, as well as the fact the game does not support Xbox LIVE but nowhere does it say that the two-player aspect is severely limited.
Click for larger imageHappily for me, the game logs how far you've come in the game at each save point. So I can tell you with some accuracy that you'll have to play 32% of the story mode of the game, which is all single player, before you unlock the advertised "players 1-2" mode. So that's a third of the game gone. But hey, at least you can do two-player now, eh? Umm, no, not in the story mode you can't.
That's right, The Spiderwick Chronicles still won't let you play the story as a 2 player co-op game... which is contrary to the "co-op 2 players" advertised on the back of the box.in two-player mode. Now I've seen the film and I'm pretty damn sure there were plenty of sections where the kids acted together as a team, but guess what? In Sierra's version of The Spiderwick Chronicles, you're on your own the whole sodding time.
Click for larger imageThe only time two kids can play together is in a bunch of mini-games tacked onto the options menu and, because of their simplicity and lack of imagination, these games are worth one or two plays before everyone is totally fed up with them. And that is the total two-player experience.
