The Ant Bully (game)

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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The Ant Bully
So bad you can't even jump properly!
Genre(s): Action-adventure Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Nintendo GameCube Game Boy Advance Microsoft Windows Nintendo Wii Release Date: NA: July 24, 2006 EU: July 28, 2006 (GBA, PS2) EU: August 25, 2006 (PC) NA: December 5, 2006 (Wii) AU: March 1, 2007 (Wii) EU: March 2, 2007 (Wii) Developer(s): Artificial Mind and Movement Publisher(s): Midway Games

The Ant Bully is a video game based on the animated movie of the same name. It was released for the Wii, GameCube, PS2, Game Boy Advance and PC in 2006 alongside the theatrical release of the film. The story and actions of the game correspond with the film. This article will only go over the console and PC versions.

Why It's A Bully

1. All the models in the game are badly rendered and look horrible.
2. No support for progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen which causes the graphics to look so blurry on a TV that supports high definition. Other games out at the time such as Super Mario Strikers, Star Fox Adventures, F-Zero GX and Jak II had this support.
3. The videos included as extras are poorly mixed.
4. The controls are sometimes slow to respond to.
5. The hit detection is unpredictable which can lead to your attacks not working at times or the enemies' attacks going through you at times.
6. The missions all feel the same along with lacking variety which makes it too repetitive.
7. Corny dialogue, which can get really annoying.
8. Outdated graphics compared to many other games at the time that look a whole lot better such as the Jak and Daxter series, Super Mario Sunshine, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good and Evil, among many others.
9. Shoddy audio presentation such as the voice acting often repeating, cutting out, or overlapping.
10. Only a handful of boss battles and they are terrible.
11. The lines for the characters when you fail a mission are really abysmal.
12. The music cue that plays when you fail a mission is horrible.
13. When you take confirmations in the menus, you have to hit the X button in the GameCube version rather than the A button unlike several other games that were released for the GameCube.
14. No tutorial stage which is a peculiar design choice compared to other games such as Spider-Man 2, the Star Wars Rogue Squadron games and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
15. The motion-controls for the Wii version seem like an afterthought as they're really horrible and confusing.
16. The same plants, items, and objects are recycled constantly which leads to many environments looking identical which is easily noticeable when you stall and look around.
17. If you fail a mission, the game asks "Do you want to retry the mission?" where you're given two options. The option to retry the mission is called "Retry Now" rather than a more proper term such as "Retry", or "Yes" with the other option being if you don't to retry the mission being titled "Return to Colony".
18. Nearly every mission either involves collecting a bunch of esoteric items or fighting the same cookie-cutter enemies over and over again.
19. You're always free to visit the areas that you've previously cleared to hunt for fire crystals at your own pace, but these token nods to adventuring are much too modest to overcome the doldrums brought about by so many lame missions.
20. Bad technical aspects such as with the polygon count, texture count, and draw distance.
21. Weak audio.
22. The lock-on system isn’t always reliable which makes it easy to miss and waste ammo.
23. The twitchy movement makes it unnecessarily difficult to target enemies with your primitive ant weapons.
24. It's all too easy to fall when carefully crawling up walls.
25. Lucas doesn't jump as high in the PC version which is a shame.
26. For the lock-on system, there's no option to tap the left shoulder button to switch targets like in other combat video games such as in The Legend of Zelda series.
27. Really short length, about five hours long.
28. The fights with the non-boss enemies get too hard sometimes such as with the black widow spiders, the spitting spiders, and the mosquitos.
29. The way the game tells more of the film's story is preachy and bland.
30. The cinematic cutscenes look terrifying.
31. Too many cookie-cutter enemies.
32. There's no dodging mechanic.
33. Lackluster aesthetics.
34. The earwigs are terrible because they can steal something such as a sweet ring or a stolen ant that you're trying to bring back to someone resulting in failing the mission.
35. The missions where you can fail a certain objective can get frustrating. If you fail a certain objective in a mission, then you'll have to start the mission all over again from scratch. Especially the mission where you have to prevent the earwigs from breaking Hova and Fugax's flowers while even worse, if you try to throw seed bombs at the earwigs, you'll also bring down the flowers resulting in failure. In missions that involve collecting items or anything else and bringing them back, if they fall off into a pit or water or even get stolen by an earwig while failing to get it back from them before they successfully flee, you fail the mission.
36. The music during the missions gets too repetitive.
37. You have to complete certain missions to unlock certain areas that you can explore at any time.
38. Lucas' facial expressions when you're running low on health and on the "are you sure" screens look too creepy.
39. The mission objective in the pause menu during a mission never changes whatsoever even when you progress through the mission and get new objectives unlike other games such as The Simpsons: Hit & Run, the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series and the PSP version of Spider-Man 2.
40. Some actors do not reprise the voice roles, such as Nicolas Cage as Zoc.

Redeeming Qualities

1. At least the game is faithful to The Ant Bully, despite this game being average and even if this isn't saying much.
2. Great voice acting.
3. The GBA version is better, as it is more like a 2D adventure game.

Reception

The game received mixed to negative reviews.

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