Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this movie tie-in game is too hard for the youngest members of the movie's targeted audience. It's best played by kids ages 8 through 12. You don't have to have seen the movie to play the game, but it helps. Activision has taken the movie sequences and expanded them to create unique gameplay missions that are exciting. While you do use a pollinator gun to extract pollen from healthy flowers and sprinkle it on unhealthy flowers, you also use the gun to fire pollen at pesky insects who fall down and fade away.
Families can talk about how the game compares to the movie. When watching the movie, were there scenes that looked like they would make a good video game level? What scenes would you have chosen if you were in charge of making the video game? Did you like playing the missions or the mini-games? What if Jerry Seinfeld had not provided the voice of Barry B. Benson -- would the game have been as fun? What made you want to play this game? Was it all the marketing hype of the movie? Families might also want to discuss the role of bees in the ecosystem.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Jinny Gudmundsen
If Barry B. Benson bee-guiled your kids while they watched Bee Movie, then they will enjoy reliving the experience in the video game version called BEE MOVIE GAME.
Bee Movie Game is a linear game with mini-game side quests. The game opens inside the hive of a bee colony in Central Park in New York City. You play as Barry, the new bee college graduate who can't commit to doing the same job in the hive for the rest of his life.
You start in New Hive City, a hexagonal world that looks just like the movie set. Jerry Seinfeld speaks for Barry; and the game, like the movie, is full of puns and clever insect jokes.
As you walk or drive your car around the hive's many roadways, you will find jobs waiting for you to try. For example, you can sort good honey from bad, unload tanks of honey from trucks, or take the good bee citizens around the New Hive City by providing a taxi service. All of these odd jobs take the form of mini-games, and they earn you honey snacks, the currency of this world.
The heart of the game is presented in 15 missions outside of the hive, which track the plot of the movie. You view Central Park and beyond from a bee's perspective. You must finish one mission before the next will unlock. At times, you need to play inside the hive to earn enough honey snacks to pay for a flight pass outside of the hive to continue the movie's adventure. The missions will place you in hazardous situations, including aerial dogfights with wasps, avoiding collisions with cars, trying to stay alive while on top of a tennis ball during a match, and flying through a rainstorm. In the latter, the game mechanics provide you with special Bee Reflexes which, when activated, make the raindrops move in slow-motion and allow you to enter special wind tunnels.
While this game features many unique levels of inventive gameplay, it falls short of a perfect rating because it can be confusing to play, and at times, it's too repetitive. Within the hive, you frequently hit invisible walls and spend a lot of time trying to find the new areas that are open to you. Within the missions, some of the instructions are inadequate, and the save points are too far apart. Also, the frequent activity of pollinating flowers quickly becomes tedious.
In addition to the Story Mode that retells the movie, the game has a Multiplayer Mode which offers racing games and two-player bee-themed arcade games. The Wii version has some games that are unique to that version.
Bee Movie Game is geared for kids; and yet, the gameplay is so challenging that the youngest fans of the movie won't be able to play it. This game fits best with kids ages 8-12. For them, being a bee will be wild fun.
Other fun movie tie-in games are Cars for younger players, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for players ages 10 and up.
Platform Notes
Nintendo Wii
The Wii version has three Bee Speedway racetracks, and three unique arcade games that are not found on the other platform games.
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Sexual ContentBarry B. Bee is attracted to a human named Vanessa. |
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ViolenceAs a bee, you use a pollinator gun to fight off other pesky insects that fall and fade away. Humans can try to do you harm by swatting at you. Raindrops can do you in -- so you have to use bee reflexes to slow them down and avoid them. |
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Social BehaviorBarry has a interspecies friendship and fights for the rights of bees. There's also a message about the importance of bees to the ecosystem. |
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CommercialismThis is a movie tie-in game and the movie has been greatly hyped. |
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Educational ValueKids will learn a little about the role of bees in the ecosystem. |
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