A Bug’s Life (PS1)

On one of many boring trips to my aunt‘s beach house that I was forced to take during my childhood summer vacations, I wound up getting a gift copy of A Bug’s Life for the Sony PlayStation.  I’m not even entirely sure I’ve watched the actual movie.  They say not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if I’m going to be reviewing games, I’m going to actually review the game.  So in all facets of this situation, the gist of it is, “Well…they tried, and it’s the thought that counts.”

The biggest draw for this game was the seed system.  Firstly, because it depends on playing as some kind of small creature in the great outdoors to make sense, so the number of games it can be cut and pasted into is pretty small.  Secondly, because it eschewed standard hidden power-ups that you just grab out of the air in favor of something that felt more like a basic puzzle, and that was pretty cool.  Granted, you also had floating coins, letters, and pieces of grain that you collected the old-fashioned way to score some end-of-level points and unlock grainy, bite-sized pieces of a movie that you could’ve owned in full on VHS or DVD for half the price, so it wasn’t all innovative and fresh.

The seed system was the only interesting thing about this game.  I used to think the tree level theme was good, but now that I’m listening to it again, it just sounds like a cacophonous mess with parts that might have been good on their own, without so much going on at once.

Flik, our hero, was really hard to control.  He had a tendency to overshoot where you wanted him to go, and between that and enemy bugs often blending in with the environment, it was a recipe for disaster.  To add insult to injury, Flik is an ant, and ants are kind of known for their ability to walk on all kinds of surfaces without sliding all over the place like it’s the speed skating event in the Winter Olympics.  The enemy bugs respawned very frequently until you acquired the gold berries, which were the only means by which these hostile mook bugs could be defeated.  The game tried to encourage defeating them all for an end-of-level token, but after a few levels I was just thinking, “Is it really worth it to go to all this trouble for a grainy clip from a movie that costs about half of what this game probably cost?”

Early on in the game, there was a level that involved floating across a canyon on a dandelion seed, where you had to make out where the altitude boosters were located, and those were very hard to see.  Touching the ground resulted in instant death by bird, if I recall correctly.  I’m not about to go back and check anytime soon.  That was a fun one.  Whoooo boy.  Also of note, the only way to gain extra lives is to spell Flik’s name by collecting floating letters, which by 1998 was hardly a novel phenomenon.  At least it didn’t force you to collect the letters in order!  Generally speaking, if the developers had taken more care to make sure the game controlled in a way that was enjoyable rather than frustrating, this might have been a surprisingly good movie-to-game adaptation.

I hear that there was a direct Nintendo 64 port that was even more of a mess.  Think I’ll pass on that.  For making a conscious effort to integrate the IP into the gameplay, despite its other failures, I’m going to give the PlayStation version of A Bug’s Life a probably very generous: