Pinobee: Wings of Adventure
Reviewed by MaxH
There's nothing worse than seeing fun that's not
being had. Pinobee is a prime example of this. It has
some clever level design, novel ideas and welcomes
exploration with it's non-linear layout. It's like an
epic 3-D adventure scaled down into a 2-D platformer
and crammed into a tiny GBA cart. But there's one
thing, above everything else, that this game is.
It's boring.
There's a huge amount of excellent ideas in here. The
story is that Pinobee is a robot bee created by some
mad scientist or other. But - and here's the problem
- Pinobee's creator, some old man, has been
kidnapped, and just as he was about to fit Pinobee's
heart in place. So off Pinobee goes to rescue his
creator, learning morals and making decisions on the way.
This is potentially sickening (Imagine love stories,
poems, perhaps even musical numbers), but the
heartless plot element is actually handled very well.
Pinobee has no emotions, he can only get annoyed and
die, YOU must make his moral decisions for him. If
you see a magical fairy, and attack it, that shows
bad morals and you will not be helped. Little ideas
like this are dotted around the levels and are
interesting to see and nicely presented.
But this is by no means the meat of the game. Moral
decisions are rare and quick and so should be
considered as more of a quirk than an actual gameplay
feature. The actual game consists of a lot of jumping
and flying. It's a little like sonic in that you can
often just zoom through the levels and pinball around
the walls without much thought. But there are two
major things missing from the formula, two VERY
important gameplay elements.
Consistency and balance.
Hudson just couldn't decide what they wanted from
Pinobee. Did they want a fast rollercoaster ride of a
platformer like sonic, or a more relaxed
exploration-based adventure.
Decisions, decisions........
Well it's got to be out for GBA launch, better pick soon.
Oh what the heck! We'll have them both!
Bad idea Hudson. This killed your game.
Try and crossbreed two completely different species
and you'll end up with an ugly, malformed child that
doesn't fit in anywhere, no-one will want it. The
same can be said for the gameplay style on Pinbobee.
There are just too many places to go, things to find
and characters to discover for it to play like it
does. You'll rocket around big open spaces not
knowing where to go, but rarely will it be exciting.
Not just because of the exploration factor (Although
that plays a part) but because there's no focus, like
I said before, no consistency. The fast parts of the
level aren't as exhilarating as they should be.
Awkward enemy placement, sparse platform layouts and
a general lack of direction sink any appeal the
break-neck speed areas have. It seems hopeless.
But it isn't, not quite anyway. It's overall design
and style is poor, but it's playable, and it's
intelligent ideas and features are compelling. At the
end of every level Pinobee will write a diary
reflecting on your progress. Do well, and Pinobee's
growing sense of morals and ethics will be present in
his diary. Perform poorly and he'll write bitter and
angry fragments. If you do badly enough, developing
no heart at all, Pinobee will question the point of
his adventure, give up and go home, and you can't do
anything about it.
And with this outlandishly bizarre feature, the game
partly redeems itself. You begin to play more
carefully, and you make an effort to discover all the
nooks and crannies and behave courteously to all the
magical fairies, there is satisfaction to be had from
Pinobee. The game takes everything into account
before your diary entry is written, how many enemies
you've attacked, skills you've gained, items you've
collected, character interaction. Everything! The
game is watching you closely and it's marking hard.
And there are other nice features present. Your main
move is the jump, this is basically all you can do at
first. But navigate the levels carefully and explore
thoroughly and you may happen upon power-ups that
will let you do a double jump. And after that a
triple........ and so it goes on until you can
perform a ridiculous amount of jumps (I lost count).
And collecting items can boost your skills, health
and many other things RPG-style. You can even trade
them with a friend who might have a GBA and a copy of this game.
But it isn't enough. When stripped of the flashy
extras, Pinobee is quite a dull experience. It simply
consists of wandering around levels looking for
things to do, enemies to kill, items to collect,
ANYTHING. Often there is no scenery to explore, you
must fly up into big screens of vast background and
fly around randomly, hoping to find somewhere you
haven't been before. And so it's a tediously random
and thankless chore in the end, it's best to just
dash through the game as quick as you can without
bothering to complete it properly.
Graphically, Pinobee is a winner. The characters are
well animated mock 3-D sprites and have good
definition and style. Level set pieces are done with
the same pseudo-3D style and come off very well, the
game is bright and colourful, with many inventive
pieces of vegetation and general oddities spread
around the give the game a little more oomph. The
backgrounds are lovely, they are stylishly drawn,
scroll well and can create a surprising sense of
speed or moody atmosphere if they wish.
The sound is the same intensely irritating Japanese
cute techno you've heard in a million games before.
And the jumping sound effects can be very annoying.
With nothing here worth listening to, I can't think
of any reason not to turn the sound off.
How long does it last? that's up to you really, if
you want to zip through the game with no effort then
it will be over in little more than two hours.
Collect EVERYTHING and who knows, you could be in
there for days.
Pinobee is frustratingly impressive and irritatingly
bland in equal parts. If you can be bothered to
persevere then there are plenty of rewarding moments
and a lot of good ideas. It is at least unique after
all. But it fails to entertain you in the long term,
it's poorly thought out and sloppily realised. It's only average.
Wing Ding
+ Some great ideas
+ Exploration is rewarded
+ It has it's moments of satisfaction
+ Lots to do
+ Long lasting, if you want it to be
+ Unique
+ Great visuals
Bee-have
- Awkward mix of styles
- Sparse levels
- Repetitive
- Frustrating
- Putrid sound
- Short if you can't be bothered
- No variety
- Unbalanced
- Inconsistent
If you like this....
Sonic Advance - GBA: If you like the speedy half of
the game, try this.
Klonoa: Empire of dreams - GBA: If you liked the
exploration half of the game, try this.
Overall: 5 out of 10