"Good for your son..."

Introduction
People think that Winnie the Pooh is one of those series for little kids. In spite of that, I had heard about this game some time ago, and I thought I should give it a try... after all, is this a game for kids only, or will everyone enjoy this?

Gameplay
Even before reaching the main menu, you will find yourself controlling Winnie, which may confuse people. However, after a few steps you will a book, which takes you to the main menu, with the "New Game", "Password" and the usual "Options".

It's your first time, so you just pick "New Game", and you will see some nice scenes that appear to have been taken from the cartoon, and you will see Pooh and a boy chatting. However, you can see their faces near what they are saying, and those are computer drawn faces, which isn't very nice... Well, finally we get to play with Pooh, and you will be taken to a place where he will find some closed books, each related to the better birthday of each of his friends, and at the beginning only one of them will be open.

So, you enter it, and that's where the real game begins. You will be controlling Pooh most of the times, and as soon as you start you will discover that this first level is somehow like a tutorial. However, some things are not explained in it, meaning that the player may have an hard time finding how to do them (like I did...) by himself. Plus, the levels are always boring, as you need to do ALWAYS the same thing, that includes: finding honey pots (somehow like money in this game), finding a certain object (and using them seems to be an hard task sometimes...), take it to a certain character, play a mini-game, repeat.

Mini-games? Yeah, this has some, and you will be able to control different characters in each of them... for example, Tigger has some metal gear solid scenes in which he needs to avoid the enemies and reach certain points, Eeyore needs to catch some animals in a certain time (which animal it is, depends across the game), Rabbit can use some faces to scare the enemies and defeat them (the faces are performed in a bust-a-move way, meaning that you will need to perform the combos that appear written in the screen) and so on... But if you wanna play them again, you will need to save your password somewhere and use it again, as there is no option to play a specific mini-game.

Finally, sometimes some enemies appear, and you need to defeat them in order to proceed... well, Pooh just needs to touch a baloon in order for all of them to disappear, which means that this game isn't violent or anything...

Story
Pooh was having a rumbly tumbly, so he and a boy (I think his name is Alfred, or something like that...) thought that remembering the best "happy birthday" of all his friends would make it go away... not much of a story, but at least it is an original one!

Graphics
I don't think the graphics in this game are good at all, since you can't even clearly see all the characters and their details. Also, like I said before, some of the cut scenes are shown with images that appear to have been taken from the series (well, all of characters dressed up as Tigger turns out being quite funny!), but the faces on the dialogues were made on the computer, and that isn't good, as they are ugly...

Sound
Some of the songs seem to have been taken from a specific place (they already appeared in Kingdom Hearts for PS2, I remember them, so maybe a series or movie? I can't be sure...), but most are just boring...

Play Time/Replayability
I could finish the entire game in less than 2 hours, but most of the players who will get this (young kids, I guess...) may take more time than I did... However, once you finished the game there isn't anything that will make you play it again, as the game doesn't have any bonus things or anything...

Final Recommendation
Despite being a fan or Pooh or not, this game is only good for people who REALLY love Winnie the Pooh, and even if you are in that group... try renting it for a day or something, ok?

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/13/05