''The Ant Bully'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

based on the movie of the same name. It was released on July 24, 2006 alongside the theatrical release of the movie. The story and actions of the game correspond to that of the movie.

Gameplay

The game is broken down into missions, though the game follows a linear design. The game is a traditional

action-adventure game The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a story ...

, with players able to use different weapons to clear a mission and advance to the next level.

Plot

Players control the protagonist, Lucas Nickle, as he is shrunk to a miniature size and forced to work in an ant colony. He goes on many adventures throughout his backyard. From the

Cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek ...

Garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...

, to the Spiders lair, Lucas must overcome the challenges and become an ant. Getting in his way is the local

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

hive and the Exterminator. After overcoming many challenges, Lucas eventually has a mano-a-mano showdown. Lucas first must shoot the Exterminators ear with the Dart bow and avoid his hands and poison. Next, Lucas must blind the Exterminator with the Larva silk squirter. Eventually, Lucas and the wasps drive the Exterminator away after stinging him in the butt. Afterwards, Lucas collects the last of the Fire crystals and returns to normal size in 2006.

Reception

The Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions received "mixed" reviews, while the PC and Wii versions received "generally unfavorable reviews" according to video game

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Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. ''

Detroit Free Press The ''Detroit Free Press'' is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the ''Sunday Free Press''. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primari ...

'' gave the PS2 version a score of three stars out of four and stated: "The best part of the game is Lucas' maneuverability in getting from Point A to Point B. In some instances, he must glide on a rose pedal. In others, he summons other ants through telepathy, and the group either flings Lucas through the air or operates as an impromptu ladder." ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' gave the same console version a score of three stars out of five and said, "This must be one of the first instances in which a video game actually seems like the natural format. But even here, as you acquire weapons, ride wasps and beat up tiny-huge creatures, it seems never to aspire to much beyond adequacy." However, ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' gave the PC and PS2 versions two stars out of five, saying, "The twitchy movement makes it unnecessarily difficult to target enemies with your primitive ant weapons (a lock-on button turns out to be little help) and it's all too easy to fall when carefully crawling up walls."

References

External links

*
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ant Bully Video Game, The 2006 video games Action-adventure games Behaviour Interactive games Game Boy Advance games GameCube games Midway video games PlayStation 2 games Single-player video games Video games about ants Video games about insects Video games based on films Video games developed in Canada Video games scored by Alexander Brandon Video games using Havok Wii games Windows games