A Bug’s Life (GBC) Review (no fat)

Game Description

A successful movie will get ported to a video game, its inevitable in the publicity hogging world of entertainment. The only requirement seems that the flick must have a plot that can be tweaked to fit a game. A Bug’s Life has seemingly passed the test, as its port lets you control the protagonist, Flik, the ant who’s still as exuberant as in the movie.

A Bug’s Life Gameplay

Flik wants to be popular and put an end to General Hopper’s scheme, which basically involves stealing the population’s food for his personal usage. In doing so, Flik, who’s not physically suited to be a hero, enrolls the help of a few new comrades.

Your quest involves controlling Flik and exploring nine levels before reaching the evil General Hopper. Your adventure is full of dangers, as Hopper has sent his legions of minions to prevent you from eventually reaching him. Unfortunately, while there are a certain variety of enemies, which include bees and worms in addition to the mandatory grasshoppers, these are incapable of opposing you in any way. A handful of bosses also profess to be somewhat better than their loyal followers, but even these aren’t that challenging to beat.

A Bug’s Life full of Berries

A Bug’s Life is a platform game where you need to jump over gaps most of the time while killing the fiends. Unfortunately, all the levels are too similar to make the game even remotely fun. Along the way, the foes constantly swarm towards you in a futile attempt to stop you. You can easily dispose of them by throwing berries at them.

You can only carry a limited number of berries at a time, and collect more throughout each stage. However, grabbing these is no piece of cake, as they fall from the sky and constitute a real menace to your linear progress. The first and foremost requirement is to avoid being crushed by them by dashing back and forth, before being able to latch on to them. Of course, you’re pretty much dead once you run out of berries, which is bound to happen at various points in the game.

A handful of power-ups and items are similarly available, and these typically pertain to giving you a welcome health boost or just providing you with additional berries. There is also a lot of searching to be done for parts that can eventually be used to build the Harvesting Machine, and the Mechanical Bird, which are so critical to Flik’s extraordinary adventure. Successfully restoring the Harvesting Machine unlocks a bonus mode, which involves harvesting a crop field within a time limit over several maps. It’s not a particularly original and enjoyable mini-game, but it does add more variety to this otherwise lacking title.

A Bug’s Life Controls

The simplistic controls that consist of pushing A to jump and B to attack are made frustrating by the poor response times. Worse still, the lousy detection rate often means you’ll be mashing the buttons to no avail.

A Bug’s Life Visuals

The visuals are disappointing with each level drawn as a single blob devoid of details. The color palette, specifically for the backgrounds, is also kept to a ridiculous minimum. The insects, such as the bugs and the grasshoppers, are somewhat better, as they benefit from relatively fancier colors. On the other hand, the horrible animation and frame rate, combined with the insipid character models, have a negative impact on the gameplay.

A Bug’s Life Sound

While the game has the decency of providing several themes instead of a single tune, all of them are monotonous and never fit the game. The sound effects further contribute to the Bug’s annoying effect, and the unnerving metallic feel isn’t geared to win anyone over either.

A Bug’s Life Overall

A Bug’s Life is a horrible experience mainly because of its atrocious controls and simplistic, yet flawed, game mechanics. There’s not a single redeeming trait about it, which is unfortunate given the stellar movie it is based on.

A Bug’s Life Cost

At the time of writing, getting A Bug’s Life to bug the life out of you would cost around $14.99.