A Bug's Life

I love the film this is based on; it remains a childhood favourite to this day and will defend it to my grave. The same can't be said for its game adaptation which granted isn't the worst thing in the world, but is leagues worse than it should be even for a Disney tie in.

So how to describe this game, imagine if Busby 3d was competently made but kept all of its annoying design choices. That's this game for you as while it isn’t unplayable like that abomination is, it has a lot of the same issues as that game starting with our hero. Flick may not be Disney's most endearing protagonist in the film, but at least he knew how to shut up which is a quality his game counterpart is in need of. Worse still are the things he says, it's not comically awful like in Busby, rather it's innocuous to the point of it being redundant. Also, there are the pseudo tank controls as like Busby, flick takes a while to gain momentum and equally as long to slow down once you stop pressing the controls. In some ways it's worse here as this game has slippery controls as opposed to the stiffness from Busby which makes platforming a real pain in these levels. At least flick is better at defending himself than Busby given how he's equipped with a never-ending supply of berries that have varying levels of damage depending on what powerup you have to strengthen them; he can also butt stomp as well as jump on smaller enemies which works reasonably well here. While the presentation is much better in this game than in Busby, that's like saying that the animation in shark tale is better than in food fight as while that's technically true, it doesn't make the former fun to look at due to how poorly rendered the graphics are. Sure, the environments actually resemble locations from the film, but they're poorly rendered as are the character models as the look lifeless compared to their film counterparts.

Were it not for the bad presentation, bad controls and flicks inability to shut up, we'd have a decent game as the puzzles are well constructed here as is the soundtrack which is largely new compared to the one used in the film. It's clear the developers weren't too inspired by Busby when making this game, but likely wanted the meme credentials (or whatever the 90s equivalent of that is) to make it stand out from the other generic Disney titles of the day.

The N64's limited cartridge space makes its version of A Bug's Life inferior to the PlayStation version. The latter features FMVs straight from the source, introducing each level much more effectively, as well as more voice acting and voice clips. On N64, levels are introduced by lifeless, still images with text plastered over them, each sliding to the next far too quickly for a child to read--an odd oversight considering the game was obviously designed with children in mind. Certain segments voice-acted on PlayStation are text-only on N64. Fortunately, most of Flik's in-game quips remain, as do the solid sound effects and soundtrack.

In contrast to the PlayStation version's clean, authentic look, the N64 version runs at an atrocious frame rate and pop-in is so egregious that you can at times see entire pieces of world geometry appear ahead of you. Objects and enemies pop-in at such a short distance that it becomes disorienting, as well as cheap from a gameplay perspective given you can be running along and suddenly take a hit from an enemy that materialised a foot ahead.

On that note, it's odd how strangely and sadistically cheap A Bug's Life is at times, given it's a kids' game. Floaty and sometimes unresponsive controls aside, enemies endlessly respawn unless hit with the most powerful weapon upgrade, the width and position of instant death pits appear to be meticulously placed such that they're not or barely visible, and some enemies burst out of walls from nearly invisible holes in thin corridors or places a player is expected to drop a seed. Seeds are one of the game's stronger and more innovative points; they're scattered about and can be used to grow different types of plants you can use to traverse the world by, for example, reaching higher places, adding somewhat of a puzzle aspect to what is otherwise a straightforward adventure.

A Bug's Life is impressively faithful to its source material and has a couple of nice ideas, but the N64 version is without doubt the worst way to experience it.