A Bug's Life

A Bug’s Life was released in 1998 as a tie-in to the video game of the same name. It wasn’t very good. The problem with Bug’s Life, as with the video games of its ilk, is that it hails from the mass-produced school of the game design. You play the main character of a film you have recently seen in a movie, conversing with other characters you have recently seen in a movie. You jump about on platforms and you jump on a monster’s head to kill it (because all video games are Mario).

You collect lots of collectibles and occasionally a glassy-eyed 3d model of a character you recently saw in a movie challenges you to a race around a part of a level in order to collect an important power-up for later on in the game. Sadly, all sense of flow is ground down by the haunting knowledge that you are playing a licensed game, where the experience of playing the game is made to match the way the movie unfurled.

The interface is standard in that you interact with the game world through the actions of the character you play (I avoid using the word ‘avatar’). The D-pad controls movement, there is a jump button, a fire button and shoulder buttons for the camera. The camera controls in particular are painful, but they were a relic of an era that couldn’t count on the presence of the control-sticks that are the industry standard today, so we can be merciful in that one regard.

In all other ways, A Bug’s Life fails to make the game personal or meaningful in any way, because every aspect of it screams ‘This part of the game is made this way, because this is what all 3d games are like’. Given that the designer is Psygnosis (or ‘the guys who made Lemmings’, a thoroughly original concept), I think there might be a reason for this: Licensed Games are a good way to make money. ‘Licensed Games’ require interacting with the film industry and people who are talented in their own field but have a pared-down understanding of what makes a game a game.

At the time when A Bug’s Life was being created, creating a 3D game was a massive undertaking compared to making 2D games. Creating a failed 3D game would have cost whoever made the game on two major fronts – firstly, the expensive 3D licenses would suddenly have looked a whole lot more expensive given that they weren’t making money back and it would have been harder to acquire any other licenses in the future. In the end, making A Bug’s Life the way it eventually turned out would have been a much safer proposition for the company and for the film studio executives who didn’t really know how games are made.

Of course, who really wants to spend time pushing the envelope when they’re making a kid’s game? (The answer? 5th Cell. Scribblenauts. The only reason I’m not reviewing them is because I haven’t picked up my copy yet.)