A Bug's Life

These Disney Action Games have never been known for their high quality, but this seems to be a new low. Control is awful, camera is painfully bad, sound is poor and game-play is all over the place, random and barely making sense. Since I haven't seen the film, I can't say if the story faithfully follows it, but from what I've been told, it seems fairly accurate. The control is weak and slow, making the ant you control seem like a heavy, mech-like creature that needs to run every movement command through a series of filters before commencing with them(now, I haven't watched the film, and I don't plan to, but don't they run a lot?). The camera is the same as in Action Man: Operation Extreme, meaning it works against you most of the time by centering your view every time you turn around, making it nearly impossible to get an overview of what's going on, and making strategic movement virtually impossible. Why programmers turn the very *camera* of games against you, I will never know. They can hardly be doing this accidentally, with how many games there have been with it, so far, and, well, given that simple logic dictates that this type of programming will leave you with a rather unfriendly camera. You can't run away from the enemies, because once you turn around, the camera turns with you, turning that button you're pressing to run in the opposite direction 180 degrees, making you run smack into what you're trying to run away from. The sound, much like in the Hercules game, consists of the same three or four lines that barely relate to the situation at hand being repeated ad nauseum. The game-play is pitiful, with most levels simply being about finding the way to the end of the level, which, most of the time, is far harder than it should be, probably in a desperate attempt to make the game longer(it took me at most two hours to beat). I'm not kidding, this game has some of the most confusing levels I've ever played through, which doesn't really make sense, since it's a children's game. There are power-ups in the game, but they barely make sense(and do nothing whatsoever to raise re-playability, which is what they were put there for). If you collect all the corn in a level, you get full health. So? Most levels are either easy enough for you not to get hurt or has a plant that spawns endless supplies of health(more about them in a moment). If you collect the four letters of Flik's name(I... don't have to tell you which ones they are... right?), you get an extra life. Goody. With about fifteen levels, that's, at most, fifteen extra lives. And once you start getting hurt, you almost certainly die. One good point about the game; when you do die, you start off almost exactly where you die, having lost nothing but the life(no progress or weapons, for example, is lost). That's about the only positive point about the game, though. If you collect a special weapon, a golden berry(more about them later) and kill every enemy in the level with it(enemies re-spawn when killed by any other means), you get a bonus clip from the movie. Wow! What a treat, huh? Really something you want to fight hard for, especially if you don't have the movie itself(what would you need them for if you do?), which costs roughly half of what the game does. Now, to get back to the plants... much of the game revolves around finding seeds for the plants, and upgrades for the seeds. The seeds come in a variety of different kinds; one for sending the player upwards or in another direction, used for gaining access to higher areas, one that grows a plant with leaves that you can stand on, again to gain access to higher platforms, one that grows a generator plant, that spawns various helpful items in the different states, like health(like I mentioned earlier), one that spawns a more powerful berry for you to fire and one that fires berries at enemies. The real problem with these is that the variations are often used as poor excuses to create levels around. Several variations are just made for one level, never to be seen neither before nor since(you lose your upgrades every time you defeat a level, and have to start over from scratch). About a third of the levels, maybe more, are set around the player having to find more upgrades for the seeds. That's just a lack of creativity. Now, as previously mentioned, one of your two means of attacking(the other being jumping twice and sliding into enemies, something that is every bit as slow and ineffective as it sounds) is throwing berries at the enemies. These berries can be upgraded. The first is too weak to defeat tougher enemies, like grasshoppers(which occupy many of the later levels, and one or two of the earlier ones, as well). Like the seed upgrades, these are lost every time you beat a level. With a tougher berry than the regular one being necessary to defeat grasshoppers(and just about every boss enemy being a grasshopper... lack of creativity again), the boss fights are usually limited to you having to find a berry upgrade, and then just firing at the enemy(since all they'll do as far as attacking goes is either throwing stuff at you or walking into you). No challenge there. Graphics are fine. There's just not really anything in the game worth playing it through for, and definitely nothing worth returning to it after you've gotten through it. No challenge, no entertainment, nothing more than a means to kill some time(and an incredibly poor means at that, since it's so short). One definitely only for the kids, and only the least picky of them. I recommend this only to huge fans of the film and/or Disney's other Action Games(if such exist). 5/10