A Dogs Life (Disney’s Bolt)

Game: Disney’s Bolt
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Windows
Player On: Xbox 360
Backwards Compatible: Yes
Price: £8.99
Available on Xbox Game Pass: No

Okie doke, something a touch different today. I’ll explain why on earth I'm playing the 2008 release of Disney’s Bolt, the video game cash grab of the movie of the same name, shortly, I promise. This game was made by Avalanche Software and Altron, published by The Walt Disney Company and Disney Interactive studios, and sadly like a lot of these games didn’t manage to get a lot of the movie stars to voice the characters, so no John Travolta or Miley Cyrus here, although weirdly Malcom McDowell and Mark Walton stay on. They’re honestly the only 2.

Right... let me explain, at least a couple of time a year it feels, Xbox Games with Gold seems to have some form of Disney tie in game going for free, and as I like achievements I grab them as they’re costing me nothing and never take super long. This one was free October 2019. Fast forward to January 2020 and new year, new me, I’m having a clear out. I have a few games of this type that have just sat on my Xbox because they’re free, in fact Bolts my most recent addition, so I’m going for it, I’m playing them. So don’t be surprised to see a few strange games being reviewed.

But I said I play everything, I enjoy variety and even have a few perfections of Pixar games in my achievement list (Cars 1&2 and Toy Story 3 for those wondering). So I’ve had experience in this genre and know these games might be good (Toy Story 3 has no right being as fun as it is) or maybe a bit repetitive (Cars 1&2) but again they never seem to be truly awful games and I need to remember this game is marketed towards kids.

So how does our canine friend stack up?? Well that’s why I’m hoping you got through that rather long intro and are still with me. Let’s start with how this game works and it’s something a little different, rather than just make the movie in level form, you take over the Bolt and Penny from Bolts fictional tv show from the movie. This means you have lots of little ‘super powers’ you can use to defeat enemies.

You play as Bolt for some missions and Penny in others, Bolts missions are the in your face, button mash type and Penny’s are more about stealth. They’re are 5 chapters in the game; Italy, Belize, Russia, China and Oceania, and all these chapters have differing numbers of missions, some significantly longer than others. But overall you’re probably looking at around 8-10 hours of gameplay which isn’t a huge amount.

Now remembering this is a kids game, the difficulty isn’t hard but does inexplicably ramp up for the Russia missions, they seem to add 4x the enemies and introduce harder and harder enemies to face, some of which can be quite difficult to beat. Now I know I’m not the best gamer in the world but I struggled at times, so goodness knows how a child is meant to do some of these things, but overall it keeps the game fresh and with somewhat of a challenge so I don’t get too bored. I will say about half way through ‘the Russia missions’ you get the feeling of ‘I’ve seen all the game has to offer’.

Every now and then you’ll be given a ‘hacking’ mini game to play as Penny, and these are essentially like a poor mans geometry wars, I can’t say I’ve had any trouble beating these (other than the one I beat without taking damage for an achievement) and think anyone whose played any geometry wars style of games will be fine, even if like me you’re awful at them.

And that’s it really, it’s linear, it’s not too challenging but I will say it’s short, to think this game was a full price releases the same year we got GTA 4 and Call of Duty: World at War (among many other fantastic releases from that year) and it feels a bit of a rip off to think the price this game once was, even now it has an inflated price because it’s a pretty easy 1000gs and CEX quote you £10 a copy.
That being said the game plays quite fun, handles pretty well and the combat reminds me of some fun brawlers we’ve all played at some point in our lives, but sadly I can’t get over the price for how long it is and how it still gets a bit repetitive half way through. I would say if you still fancy playing it, either hope it goes free again or find a copy for a couple of quid, I wouldn’t go higher.

4.5/10

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