Brother Bear for GBA

Platformer / 2003

 

 

 

 

We're starting off with one of the few Disney GBA games I've already played, the one based off my favorite movie, Brother Bear. I never owned this as a child but another kid my babysitter was watching had it and let me play. The sprites looked a lot better to me back then, but it's not the worst art style I've seen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Gameplay ★★★☆☆

 

This is a pretty typical 2D platformer and not a very difficult one. The main focus is to collect the totems of the main human characters (Denahi's wolf, Sitka's eagle, and Kenai's bear), and get to the end of the level, with very light puzzle aspects as you go along.

 

 You begin with just Kenai, but soon pick up Koda and in some levels can switch between the two. Koda can do bear things like climbing. Kenai is just trying his best.

   

 

 

 

Why is it called Snow forest if there's no snow in the level? 

 

 The tutorials are laid out entirely visually on signs and are usually easy enough to understand, though I got caught a little bit sometimes trying to figure out what it wanted me to do. Still, trial and error is fine for this because they're lenient enough with checkpoints that you don't lose a crazy amount of progress for failing.

  

 

 

 You follow a map as the story progresses and if you collect enough totems you get to play mini-games such as memory.

 

 Yess, I love memory

The only actual difficulty is the Denahi chase scenes—which honestly startled the hell out of me—and the ice levels in which you have to control what I can only describe as Kenai's Horrible Bear Momentum. The ice levels were frankly very frustrating and led to many game overs for me, and I had to actually enabled cheats to skip a Denahi chase scene level later because I couldn't figure out how it was possible (it probably is with lots of tries and practice). I feel like maybe a bad reviewer for that but I don't think anybody can blame me.

 

    

 

I encountered no glitches except for whatever the hell happened here...WHY ARE WE UPSIDE-DOWN

 

 

Anyway...the game is about two hours which is typical for a movie game. When I was a kid I always wanted a longer experience, but I would make do with what I had and play the same short games over and over. Same logic applies here if this were one of the only games I owned and I didn't have Skyrim and Stardew Valley vying for my attention.  

 

There's enough variety in the levels to keep me entertained even though it's generally very easy. I don't think it's just nostalgic because I've played it before, but because it feels exactly like the other games I would play as a child on the GBA. 

 

 

 

 Story ★★★★☆

 

 Okay, I'm biased on this one. It's my favorite movie.

  

Almost a direct copy of the movie's story, the game is interspersed with screen-grabs from the film (often with direct quotes) which in the game are sort of ugly because of the limitations of the hardware. 

 The gameplay itself doesn't reflect the story so well most of the time. You're jumping, crawling, pushing rocks, avoiding bees and all sorts of things the characters never had to do in the movie. There are some scenes that reflect the story (the chase scenes and the volcanic field scene) but it otherwise feels pretty disconnected. It assumes you've already seen the movie (because why else would you be playing this?) and leaves a lot of context out. 

 

The game weirdly ends with the scene from the movie (actually in video instead of just screenshots!) of Koda stealing Denahi's spear, and Sitka appearing as an eagle. Then the game is just over without showing the rest of the movie.

 

 

 Graphics ★★☆☆☆

  

 

 

 

I said I've seen worse, but my god I've seen better. Outside of the horrible quality screen-grabs (which would have benefit from being re-drawn to fit the system), the sprites look quite poor in color quality and general style. The sprites move very fluidly, which is pretty cool but sometimes gave an uncanny vibe for me.

 

  

 There is a mammoth riding mini-game without much substance that has a particularly strange 3D (2.5D?) art style that I was really not about. Thankfully this mini-game was pretty short and I didn't have to look at it for long each time, and it seems to let you skip ahead some levels.  

 

Some of the graphics and environments are pretty cute, but overall the visual quality is pretty low compared to other GBA games of its time. An area I do really like is the volcanic area, though I don't remember quite so many bones in the film.

 

 

 Maybe I'm being too harsh on the visuals. Despite the low quality the bears are still sort of cute.

 

 

 Music ★★★☆☆

The music is pretty cute, jaunty and usually fits the levels. The sound effects are fine; not much to say here. The only part of the game that had music that seemed close to the movie is the Mountain levels, but that's neither a good nor bad thing for a video game.

 

 

Overall ★★★☆☆

 

A decent kid's game that isn't super in-depth but is also not exceptionally janky by any means. I mean, it is kind of fun. I felt like I was dying when I was playing the ice levels and chase scenes, but some of the mini-games were enjoyable, the platforming/light puzzling is decent and I loved to play as characters from my favorite movie. This game, like the rest of the Disney games, is a game for children and it held my attention well as a child and somewhat less as an adult.

 It's a game I'm almost tempted to have just to have, but there's so much more out there as far as 2000s children's games go.