in my beautiful balloon…that’s the song that keeps playing in my head during
this game, even though I’m a bee, not a balloon. Players will spend a lot of
time flying up and away in beautiful environments, hence the song.
Unlike many,
many movie and TV-themed console releases aimed toward children, this one is
actually a well-designed game that is entertaining. While not without some
flaws, it still manages to rise heads above the
crowd of mediocrity that is the current children’s game market. As a
standalone game, it’s good, but not great. However, when contrasted against
the dreck of kiddie
games, it looks much better. You see, it’s all subjective, especially if
you knew all the bad children’s games I’ve seen lately.
The game
follows the general theme of the movie, in that
Barry Bee is a recent college graduate who has become gainfully employed at
the main local factory, Honex. While here, he
decides to break with the traditional roles of a worker bee and sets off to
see the outside world. While outside, he flies with the local flyboys, the
pollen gathers. These are the jocks of the city, and they show Barry all he
needs to know about flying, collecting pollen and avoiding hazards such as
wasps. Barry returns to the city and his job, but leaves periodically to
visit the outside world.
The game is
molded around two worlds, New Hive City and New York City. New Hive City is
the main hub of the game, where Barry can do many things like select jobs,
play mini-games and earn money for better duds from the store. Playing these
mini-games will open up missions that often take Barry to New York City, the
“outside” part of the game. Here, Barry will spend most of his time flying
while collecting pollen, fighting off wasps and avoiding rain drops.
The
mini-games in New Hive City are comprised of racing type games, arcade
shooters and button mashing games. There are also games that are clones of
old arcade classics. While these games are fun to play for the most part
(except for the taxi ones, which are interminable in length and have
confusing directional arrows), it’s in New York City that Barry and you
really get to explore and play.
In New York,
Barry will fly around doing bee types of things, like collecting pollen. He
will also need to take out pesky wasps and other hazards, plus avoid the
occasional rain shower, which can be a big deal to a small insect. These
activities sound simple, but they are really a lot of fun. Flying Barry
around is difficult at first, as he can move up and down while moving
forward, plus do barrel rolls. It’s somewhat like flying in the
Quidditch matches of the Harry Potter games. But
once this flying technique is mastered, it’s really quite enjoyable. The
attractiveness of the gardens and other areas add to the enjoyment. It’s
hard to describe, but it all feels really huge and interactive.
While Barry
is flying around the gardens, he will often use his pollinator to either
suck nectar out of flowers, or replace it in dying flowers. From time to
time, there will be nasty flying insects to deal with. Interspersed with
these flying and shooting levels, Barry will also interact with humans in
short games. These games are hard to describe, except that it’s almost like
an interactive movie clip, where Barry has to fly around animated characters
from the movie. Sometimes he will need to move in the direction that pop-up
arrows indicate, and sometimes shoot at a target. There
are also rain droplet dodging games, where Barry has to dodge the
rain drops. To make these rain dodging levels easier, Barry can slow down
time. As the game advances, all of these levels increase in complexity and
difficulty.
In order to
earn money (nectar), Barry will have to perform lots of jobs. These
mini-games involve various types of driving or racing games, with other
types of arcade games. It takes a lot of nectar to buy things like new
clothes, so be prepared to work hard and often. To get jobs, Barry will have
to visit the Job Terminals scattered around town. In order to go to New
York, Barry will have to visit the Flight Pass terminal, which caused us
some confusion at first. We were under the impression that finishing the
jobs earned a pass to the city, but not so. It’s necessary to use a flight
pass at the Flight Pass terminal. These passes can be earned by mini-games
in the flight pass kiosk, or by buying them.
There were
several times during the game that we were a little perplexed as to what
needed to happen next. This is partly because of a lack of direction during
gameplay, and a dearth of instructions in the
manual. The manual is one of the slimmest I’ve ever seen for a console
game. Having a task list would have helped with the general game direction.
In fact, as this is really a children’s game, it is odd that there isn’t a
task list.
The bulk of
the mini-games involves racing in various forms. These races are supposedly
made easier by the use of large directional arrows overhead that show the
needed direction, but in practical terms they are worse than useless, as
they will point in the wrong direction if Barry is a few streets removed
from the location. For instance, the layout of the main city is in two large
circles, rather like a figure eight. If Barry is at one circle but the
location is on the other circle, the arrow will point through walls that he
can’t go through, instead of showing the path that is actually needed. Many
of the jobs are located at the Honex, where the
arrow will always point down, because the location is actually underground.
This is just stupid, as Barry can’t dig through the dirt at the door to go
down, instead he must drive forward and gradually go down the ramps. The
arrow should always point forward in the direction he needs to go.
Despite
these slight annoyances, most of the mini-games are fun. Some of them are
too long (15 minutes for a driving mini-game is nuts!), but they are all
fairly well executed and varied. The old-style arcade games are pretty good,
too.
The whole
theme of the game is open-ended exploration, which is wonderful for a
children’s game. While there are jobs and missions, they can be accomplished
at leisure. Many of the mini-games don’t require winning to be checked off,
either. There is a ton of things to do and explore with all the missions and
mini-games, and the really cool flying levels in New York City. Collecting
items is added fun, and can be used to buy Barry new threads. Short clips
from the movie are present, and also a fun Museum of Art feature for viewing
artworks. The open-endedness of the game is very similar to the Cars and the
Bratz games for the
GameCube.
One odd
thing to note, we had several control problems with our
Wii remote while playing. Barry would almost freeze in place and go
around in circles, and the only way we could unfreeze him was by taking out
the batteries from the remote and thus cutting off the power. When it
regained power, Barry would then be able to move normally again. We’re not
sure if this was a bug in the game, or a problem with our remote.
Overall,
this is a good children’s game that is fun to play, attractively designed
and filled with lots of things to do. I really like the open-ended nature.
While it is above average, it could have been even better with a more varied
mix of mini-games to include critical thinking or puzzle types, besides just
racing and shooting for the most part. A task list would also have helped.
Some of the mini-games are much too long, too. More varied or interesting
collectibles would have been nice. Still, this game is heads above most of
the children’s games currently on the Wii. It’s
better than the recent Spyro. The Bee
Movie for the Wii is a good choice for
Christmas, especially if the kids have seen the movie.
|
|
Gameplay: 8
There
are just so many things to do! While not all of them are fun, there’s
something for everyone to enjoy. The flying levels around New York City are
the most fun, but the mini-games and other things around New Hive are mostly
fun, as well. It’s great to see so much variety and features in a kids’
game.
Graphics: 8
The
graphics are really attractive and colorful. The animated interactive clips
in New York are especially well-done.
Sound: 7
The
music is fine, but nothing to get excited about.
Difficulty: Medium
The
adventure is easy and the mini-games aren’t difficult. However, the lack of
instruction makes everything a little more difficult.
Concept: 7
The
designers did a great job with the content of the game. While there is
nothing that is really new except maybe the interactive movie clips, which I
haven’t seen very often if ever in just this manner, the execution is
exceptional.
Multiplayer: 7
Some
of the racing games can be played with friends. These are somewhat fun, but
not spectacularly so.
Overall: 8
This
game is fun to play, open-ended and crammed full of mini-games. There’s
always something to do! A better variety in the types of mini-games would
have been better, but there is still a huge amount of content. Families will
definitely want to look at this for Christmas.
