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PINOBEE: WINGS OF ADVENTURE (GBA)
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Beeing heartless ain't easy
By WILLIAM BARKER
Taking the best part of Pinocchio and the worst part of bees, then combining
the two, you'd think the end result would be a mish-mash of angry, striped,
half-bee, half-wooden, dummy-like freaks with a penchant for deceit and
stinging things.
But no.
Instead you get
a rather laid back robotic bee, whose sole purpose in life is to protect
the world from evil. His name is Pinobee.
Pinobee's creator, Grandpa Bee, had almost finished this amazing robotic
creation when a stranger broke in and kidnapped the pensioner.
There was one last
thing that Grandpa Bee failed to implement before he finished Pinobee
- a heart. Excuse me while throw up…
This cute little platform game for the GameBoy Advance comes courtesy
of Hudson, Artoon and Activision. It reminded me of the earlier Sonic
the Hedgehog titles in a number of respects. In particular the bouncy
pads and bumper balls littered throughout the game that send you hurtling
through the air like, errr, a bee.
The pacing of the
game is a little slower than Sega's flagship games, but the levels contain
that same vibrancy, with lots of greenery, trees and flowers, plus the
levels are quite big, both horizontally and vertically.
It is essentially a left-to-right scrolling platformer, yet for all its
dodgy plot lines, puke-worthy cuteness and Wizard of Oz clichés, it's
actually quite a fun little romp. On your quest to find Grandpa Bee you
must jump on the heads of many a baddy, collect flowers and basically
find the exit.
But there is more to Pinobee than just simple exploration and combat.
Along the way you'll collect special items. These are stored in a cute
little honeycomb-like menu screen. When you get four of the one colour
in a column or row, you'll be rewarded with special abilities, a bit like
MegaMan (or Rockman as it's known in the Nihon).
 These include things
like taking less damage, doubling the effectiveness of powerups and adding
more power to your dash. Dashing is a simple case of pressing A, then
once in the air, pressing it again. You start with one dash, but can acquire
many more, allowing you to explore deeper into levels.
Depending on the
direction you press on the D-pad when dashing will determine the direction
you move, whether up, down, diagonally and so on. When you have multiple
dashes, you can clear large gaps, or hoon straight up, allowing for speedy
exploration.
Pinobee is capable
of other moves too. He can climb walls, hover for a short amount of time
and what would a platform hero be without the ability to push blocks?
Interestingly, after completing the third level and reading the usual
dross that your presented with, I came across a rather, um, inspired piece
of prose. Pinobee said: "When I got closer to check it (a flower) out,
I started feeling really good and very sleepy". We think the game should
have been called Hoochey-bee, instead.
Visually, this is a very pretty little game. Everything moves smoothly
and the developers used a good amount of colour wisely, presenting the
player with a very luscious gameworld. The detail is quite remarkable
and just goes to show how good the GBA's LCD resolution is.
This game will take a while to grow on you for the simple reason that
there's not much on offer from the outset. The deeper you travel into
the digital abyss, the better it gets. There are eight different endings
and levels can be revisited at any time. However, not everyone likes the
old school 2D platform genre, so perhaps this is one for the fans.
ORIGINALITY 80%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 80%
PLAYABILITY 75%
ADDICTION 75%
ENJOYMENT 80%
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