The story follows two twin brothers and a sister in their adventures concerning their great uncle, Arthur Spiderwick. As it stands, the twins are nearly opposite in personality, Jared being adventurous and Simon being a nerd. As well, their sister Mallory is heavily into swordplay. This all mashes up in what become the three playable main characters aside from the Thumblewick character, whose controls leave very much to be desired. In any case, they discover a field guide on Spiderwick's fantastical adventures and soon enough find themselves in a battle with masses of fantasy creatures all clamoring for the book. Had the story not been based on an actual children's book, I would have been able to write it off as Hollywood cashing in on children's fantasy stories much quicker.

As you've probably figured out, the game isn't going to stray far from the story. Buy yourself a drink! Missions are by and large a very linear affair, leaving almost nothing to be dealt with on the side (apart from decorating Thumblewick's birdhouse). The children all have standard melee, jump, and ranged firing attacks-mapped to the same buttons on each. You'll learn various other tricks by leveling up, after collecting goblin fangs, which really only make you stronger than you are. Mind you, I played through this one on hard and still found the characters to be overpowered on an almost regular basis.

On top of this, you can swap between a weapon and something called a Sprite net. You'll use this to catch the Sprite fairy creatures who will give you special abilities for a limited time. You can only hold so many at once though, but the more annoying aspect would be the mini-game inserted between catching them and acquiring the powers. Once swiped, your field guide opens and you must "paint" the Sprite into your field guide (EVERY TIME) in order to have fully caught it. This mini-game is broken, as you can just dot your brush around with the A button instead of using full strokes, and the picture will fill itself in before time runs out. The heart of the issue isn't the inconvenience of this whole debacle, but the fact that if you're surrounded by enemies and go into the painting game, you can still be stabbed in the gut which loses you a Sprite and health as well.

Those who enjoyed the movie will most likely find themselves content with the game, and by that I mean the pre-teen crowd it is targeted towards. The game handles tightly enough and smacking goblins around with an aluminum bat is satisfying, too. Come to think of it, Jared's bat skills are surprisingly brutal-someone grew up on GTA.

Anyone who doesn't regularly play games will view Spiderwick Chronicles to be a fine effort, but gamers will be bored silly. The field guide walks you through the game and there's hardly a challenge at all. Not to mention that it can be completed in around 6 hours.

As a game it looks fine and sounds fine, although is cheaply riddled with cutscenes from the movie interwoven between gameplay segments instead of actual cutscenes. Whether this is some marketing ploy to whet players' appetites for the actual film or just laziness, that doesn't change that it's uncalled for. The gameplay tries to be comprehensive, but oftentimes can't decide whether it wants to be a fetch-quest or just a beat 'em up. This isn't to say that it doesn't have its moments, such as the use of the 360's joysticks in operating a dumbwaiter, but they are far outnumbered by the generic mold of the rest of the game.

While Spiderwick Chronicles didn't turn out to be a pile of trash, it's far from special and doesn't warrant a second glance in just about any situation. If you're reading this with prospects of buying a game for your kids, I'd save your money unless they're huge fans of this franchise, and in that case just go for a rental. I promise they'll be finished with it before it's due back, even with the multiplayer bits. Another licensed title will satisfy hardcore fans while the rest of the world keeps on spinning.