"Seinfeld" is one of the most well-respected and loved TV comedy shows ever. It seems then that Activision has scored big with its upcoming videogame take on Dreamworks' new CGI flick, Bee Movie, as none other than Jerry himself takes the titular role. He'll play Barry Bee Benson, a disgruntled worker bee who's got a beef with humanity. We were given a brief glimpse at what the videogame will be offering later this year.
You assume the role of Barry in a traditional 3D action environment. Apparently, Barry is a little on the lazy -- or maybe he just doesn't want to conform -- and actually likes to drive a car around town instead of flying himself from one place to the next. This is a guy who craves to have a life outside of his mundane existence inside the worker hive, and when you throw a little adventurous streak into the mix, you've got the recipe for a traditional action adventure game.
While details remain thin right now, the gameplay should end up consisting of the usual components that we've seen many times before in games like this. Expect to be traversing many different locations from the movie, collecting items and bonuses along the way as you explore. There will be a few cool unique features to help spruce up the proceedings. The coolest by far is the "hyperactive" mode, which allows Barry to briefly speed himself up to the point where everything around him appears to be moving in slow motion.
A cool example of this was shown where Barry was trying to navigate his way from one area to another in the midst of a very heavy rain storm. The droplets of water pelting down from the heavens would normally be enough to make this task nigh-on impossible, but firing up the hyperactive mode allowed Barry to deftly swerve his way through the rain in relative safety. The graphical touches associated with the hyperactive mode were pretty cool and really gave a good sense of time being slowed down.
Throughout the game, Barry will be collecting pollen nodes from various flora that he encounters. Each of the game's environments will feature many different built-in environmental methods of enemy disposal, which is great because Barry will constantly be getting hounded by predators that are a few rungs further up the food chain. Taking care of pesky wasps and dragonflies by luring them into venus flytraps is just one simple example of how this works. Other neat touches like using anthills as warp gates and bending branches and stalks on trees and flowers only to smack enemies in the face all add up to make a potentially cool slapstick game.
There will be some two-player head-to-head action to be had, although Activision is remaining tightlipped about that aspect of the game so far. All in all, there's not much to go crazy over at this point. When we get a chance to get some proper time with the game we'll be sure to report back. Given that the lead voice of Seinfeld will be a large hook for the movie, it stands to reason that it should also spill over into the game. Here's hoping that Bee Movie can carve out a niche for itself in the "I'm actually a fun game based on a movie for once" category. There aren't that many of them out there.
