Bee Movie Game

"Another shoddy movie tie in"

I have no interest in Bee Movie. I dislike Seinfeld
The person and the show. So the humor comes off as dull to me. Besides that I just don't think the movie itself looks appealing. But in my run to play all 360 games I just had to play this game. I also figured it would be some easy achievements. Boy did I have this game all wrong.

Bee Movie tells the tale of a young bee who wants to be more than your typical bee drone. So you set out into the real world. Sadly I stopped caring almost immediately as I didn't find any of the characters likeable and the story are rather bland.

Graphically the game looks alright. Nothing special and maybe not up to par with last years Open Season but the world is fairly large but I found the color schemes and everything were repeated too much. Granted that flowers and bugs really can't be all that exciting but nothing in the game creates a real world look which really shouldn't be hard. Character models are just clones of one another and with the games bee theme it can get away with that but it still comes off as being cheap.

The voice work is provided by the cast so that's always a plus and it should always be that way in these movie based games. The music did absolutely nothing for me and the sound effects are terrible. If I crash my vehicle into another one it makes no sound at all. That's such a simple thing to do that I can't even figure out why it doesn't offer any sound.

Control in the game is easy for the most part. When you're wandering around the city you can jump and interact with items. You use the Y button to enter vehicles but for some reason it just doesn't respond to that most of the time which gets annoying after a while. During the flying portions of the game I have no clue what they were aiming for with the controls. You can move up and down and all around which makes sense and the A button is used as gas but to be honest it never works right. I found myself doing the oddest things and not knowing why. I would try to fly straight and I'd end up above the flowers. Turning felt unresponsive and while there is an auto aim when you hit the aim button it tends to bounce around from object to object so that becomes a problem as well.

The game has two different types of play. There's the bee colony which plays a lot like a Grand Theft Auto game for kids. You can hop into any vehicle and drive it. You can do taxi missions, racing missions and some other lame mission type.

All of those missions are boring. It's nothing new and they feel so dumbed down that it just isn't fun at all and I doubt any of it would hold a kids attention.

Then we have the other type of game play. You fly around like a flight sim. You need to lock onto shiny flowers with the left trigger and the right trigger is used to suck the pollen out of it. It's a fun idea but you also need to revive flowers. Why? Who knows but you do so you use the pollen you have collected to then bring dead flowers back to life

But there's more to this equation. See, there are also enemies and you can lock onto them with the left trigger. You shoot with the right trigger. Sounds fun but the aiming tends to flutter around, not sure if it wants to send you to a flower or to an enemy. You also need to use your stored up pollen to fire at an enemy.

This is where the problem comes in. If you run out of pollen for whatever reason you need to hunt for a flower and suck its pollen. However the enemies tend to follow you and attack while you're trying to get ammo. Realistic yes but it doesn't make it fun at all. And besides that I never saw a single health bar for our hero so I don't even think it's possible to die so why bother with that.

The game itself is of decent length. 7 or so hours long. Kids should get a long run with this game but keep in mind that it requires some basic reading skills. Besides that the game offers moderate achievements and some will be tougher than others but if you have the time to invest into the game then you may find a quick 1000 achievement points.

At the end of the day I must say that Bee Movie just isn't a very interesting game. It drowns itself with tiresome mini games that most gamers have seen a million times and to add to the problems the flying seems botched by the controls. While playable, this game isn't really worth the time.

Story - 6/10
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 6/10
Control - 6/10
Game Play - 5/10
Replay Value - 3/10

Final Score - 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/07

Game Release: Bee Movie Game (US, 10/30/07)