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| | Title:
Disney`s Chicken Little
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System:
Xbox
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Genre:
Action/Platformer
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Publisher:
Buena Vista Games
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Developer:
Buena Vista Games
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Release:
October 18, 2005
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Online:
No
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ESRB:
Everyone (E)
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"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" — Chicken Little is quite the famous little rotisserie. Disney's Chicken Little marks one of the largest self-publishing initiatives, having both a major theatrical and video game release. Featuring many celebrity voices for the game and movie—including the voice of Zach Braff for Chicken Little—it's quite the event for Buena Vista Games (BVG) who also happened to recently acquire Avalanche Software. This title is all in-house, baby.
There's not much else to do with such a feature but make an action-platformer out of it, but a first-person shooter with the little chicken "going postal" on all the bullies who picked on him would have been quite interesting to see. The game is inherently single player, but 6 two-player mini games can be unlocked on top of its 21 different levels, most being fully 3-D. As can be guessed, most of the levels are adapted straight from the movie, as are many movie clips and the extended storyline.
The background of Chicken Little's adventure stems from his ignorance of worldly happenings, particularly the lack of knowing the tendency of acorns to fall from trees. On one such occasion, an acorn hit him on the head, leading him to repeatedly yell his famous line throughout the town. Of course, no one believed him, and instead they all laughed at his misfortune. Since then, poor Chicken Little doesn’t get to go through a single day without being harassed and bullied. It doesn’t help that he’s particularly small, either.
The school bullies do awful things, such as hiding his baseball uniform, trying to blast him at dodge ball, and assisting in keeping him late for school by dropping marbles in front of him as he's running towards the bus. Of course, if they didn’t do all that, it wouldn't make for a very interesting game. What the townspeople and bullies didn't suspect, however, is that Chicken Little would, in essence, be right. The sky falls! With aliens infesting the town, Chicken Little and his band of friends (Fish-Out-of-Water, Runt of the Litter and Abby Mallard –AKA "The Ugly Duckling") must stick together to save the day. The movie must be as funny as it portends, because the game certainly is. Not uncommonly, I laughed out loud.
Chicken Little isn't as helpless as he seems. You'll control him in soda pop jet packs, while playing dodge ball and using a yo-yo to attack and break objects, as well as use it to climb poles. You'll also be controlling the little poultry dish on hover boards, pipe rails, and even don an alien suit to help his friends. Speaking of friends, you’ll get to play with them, too. Each level is different, and is obviously suited to the type of object or action Chicken Little and friends will need to utilize or perform. Levels range from fully 3-D replicas of locales in the movie to an overhead view of Chicken Little dodging falling lockers in school while riding in a mop bucket. Chicken Little even gets some swings at the plate, and you must press the button in coordination with what's portrayed on screen for him to get the hit or whiff and strike out, much like a mini Dance Dance Revolution game. This is nothing that hasn't been done before in platformers, as Tak had it in his game, but the point is that the levels are still mixed up quite well to deter tedium.
The 3-D levels are adventurous and deep feeling, and seemingly provide an ideal environment for a platforming adventure. What this title suffers severely from is what I like to call "platformercameraitis". The camera angles can get quite agitating, which is not a good thing in a platformer game where jumping and swinging require timing and the right angle. For anyone who played and complained about a similar problem in Kingdom Hearts—another Disney game—will know what to expect, but it's a bit worse. The right analog stick is a camera view, allowing for 360 degree rotation. Pressing it centers the camera to the direction Chicken Little is facing. It seems all the ingredients are there, but sometimes the center doesn't work, or the camera will only want to rotate in one direction all the way around. The camera is particularly naughty when next to buildings or going around corners. This game has everything else going for it, and it's tough to deal with such a high profile negative mark, but the show goes on and there’s plenty more to see.
Camera issues aside, the game has decent enough control in each of its varying levels to make for a fun enough experience for gamers of younger ages, as it always stays simplistic. You can probably guess that the harder-to-win-over crowds of older gamers may tend to bypass this game as it really supplies nothing new or epic. Some of the situations, like blasting around the level in a soda pop rocket pack, are linear and have the course already tracked. You simply control movement in small increments (left, right, down and up) with the left analog to avoid obstacles or collect acorns, cards and other power-ups to clear the level, gain energy, or open one of the six mini-games. Collecting things isn't just limited to those types of levels, of course, as Chicken Little's main mode of play is platforming, which centers on reaching heights with his short double-jump and bashing things with his yo-yo. Just as the flying around or cruising down pipes can be restricted, so can the 3-D levels, as they lack many places to explore outside of any set boundary as they are nicely concealed and limiting, unfortunately. The levels are mixed up well enough so the linearity can be overlooked by most crowds.
I actually had a fun time discerning what portions of the cut-scenes are CG from the film, and what was crafted for the game. I'm thinking everything was from the movie. This title has fantastic graphics that are vibrant in color with a neat little abstract twist to the design. It has that "kiddy" look with the tires on the bus being too small, the characters not always having symmetrical face structures, etc. This isn't a bad thing—especially considering it's taken straight from the movie. Character movement is darn fluid and the framerate doesn't seem to be an issue when rocketing around the levels, as they maintain depth and actually put out a good feeling of speed--certainly very well-done renderings by Avalanche Software.
A little tedious, the music is light-hearted and bouncy, but tends to become agitating after a few minutes and really provides no additional depth to the game. It always seems so basic. The sound effects are also your run-of-the-mill "boings" and "pops", but perhaps that’s because the developers didn’t want anything at all to mask the voices cast from the actual movie. Zach Braff is Chicken Little in both the game and movie. Steve Zahn, Don Knotts and Joan Cusack also provide their voices for the game to round out a magnificent voice cast. Fortunately, the one-liners and such from Chicken Little aren't overly abundant, so Zach's voice won't want to make you shudder after playing this game...too much.
I would definitely call this game a success for Buena Vista Games and their newly-acquired team at Avalanche Software. It certainly does a fine job of bringing the movie to life in a video game, which shouldn’t be as hard to do considering Avalanche is an internal studio to The Walt Disney Company. They were given plenty of resources and technology to recreate the movie as a game, and it shows. It's definitely a must-buy for avid Chicken Little fans, and just about any youngster. Chicken Little is endearing and heartfelt, yet has a "can’t keep me down" attitude that is always a good value to teach children. Older gamers—who already know these things—may find the game to be a bit too cutesy, but darn it if the humor doesn’t overpower it! The camera issues will frustrate some, so if you're not a fan or you are very particular about your platforming games, you may want to try it out first.
| The Core Score |
Overall
7 |
| Fun |
|
7 |
| Gameplay |
|
6.5 |
| Graphics |
|
8 |
| Audio |
|
6 |
| Replay |
|
6 |
|
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