Genre: Action
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Release Date: November 5, 2007

It's safe to say that the goal of most licensed games is to make the player feel like a part of the movie, cartoon, comic or whatever they're selling. The goal is immersion and watching familiar events play out. Sadly, most of these titles fall into the hands of developers who rush to pump out a generic platformer as quickly as possible to coincide with the product release. The DS version of Bee Movie Game is possibly one of the most obvious example of this phenomenon.

Bee Movie Game plays less like a game and more like a collection of three tedious stylus-driven mini-games with a heaping dose of fetch quests thrown in as a buffer. The first two hours of this three-hour DS game were spent running back and forth, being told to collect more pollen, build strength, stamina or speed, collect pollen again and then talk to a stranger to collect the reward of more pollen, which can be used to play more of the same mini-games.

Bee Movie Game fails in accomplishing even the most basic objective of a licensed game: retelling the story of the original property. The story is kept far, far away from most of the gameplay in a cold, damp lockbox somewhere in the next galaxy. The only interplay between the story and game comes in the form of two boss battles (mini-games) against humans and a grand finale that consists of exact same things that permeate the rest of the experience. These are pretty nicely animated, emulating the style of the movie as closely as the DS really can, but it's all completely wasted. The animation goes on in the top screen while the intense focus is on the bottom screen, where the player is frantically scribbling on the DS.

The mini-games only vary in their intensity and challenge. One of them requires the sketching of basic shapes, which occasionally register as long as you draw them a little smaller than they should be and you don't try to go too quickly. Another mini-game requires that you tap blue balls with your stylus as they bounce around the screen, being careful to avoid the red ones. This gets extremely difficult when they're all ricocheting around, but once you figure out that you have to find the slowest-moving ball and wait for it to turn blue, it's easier than sketching. Finally, there's a mini-game where you have to drag an icon between two areas without getting hit by bouncing spikes or water droplets. This is extremely intense in the final levels, but again, once you find a pattern, it's a piece of cake.

Sadly, these hectic and finicky touch-screen fiascos are the absolute highlight of Bee Movie Game. The rest of the title can't even properly be called platforming, since there's no jump button. It would be most accurately described as "pressing buttons to facilitate arrival at a marked location." It's as boring as it sounds.
You're given a hidden time limit on every level, and there are technically three tiers that you can explore on every level, but everything is so neatly marked and easy to get to that even toddlers wouldn't have trouble with it. This game can be completed by anyone with thumbs. As long as you keep running to safe spots to reset the time limit and you follow the little blue and green blips on the map, you'll be done in less time than it would take to watch the movie. There are occasional troubles with running into fans because of the limited range of the camera, and Barry the Bee handles more sloppily than Kramer coming through the door, but the player has such a huge and easily replenished life bar that it never gets frustrating.

The sound is substantially worse than the graphics, consisting mostly of a buzzing sound and Jerry Seinfeld shouting and saying, "Ouch." The music is generally MIA, but when it does make an appearance, it's forgettable.

Bee Movie Game for the DS doesn't take much skill. Once you figure out the maps and realize that you press the A button to talk to people, you'll find yourself approaching victory in a matter of hours, occasionally stopping to punch flowers, birds or cats to get some more pollen. You'll be rewarded with a few lines of dialogue recounting the movie's events and some still frames. The touch-screen and scrolling controls are sloppy, the sound is almost nonexistent, and the graphics are decent but boring. Even devoted fans of Jerry Seinfeld and his pet project should stay far away from this DS title. If you absolutely must play Bee Movie Game, opt for one of the console versions instead.

Score: 4.0/10