Disney's Bolt

I know they’re almost always bad and I know they’re shoddily done, but deep down in my jaded heart I have a soft spot for movie tie-in games. I’ve previously talked about Disney’s Brave and Tron and remember enjoying them to a degree. Obviously the bad part about a movie tie-in game is that they’re usually rushed out to capitalise on the movie they’re aping and most of the time are given to fairly low key studios to produce, probably to cut down on costs. I’m not having a go at the low key studios, the gaming world needs them to keep our indie rivers flowing, but I digress. 

Disney’s Bolt is a movie tie-in game that puts you in the paws of Disney’s most loved four legged-oh wait I forgot about Pongo. Disney’s best known good doggo-oh wait I forgot about Goofy. Into the paws of one of Disney’s dogs. Except you aren’t, because at first you’re playing as Bolts dopey, Kim Possible wannabe owner, Poppy. 

After completing the brief “puzzle” section as Poppy, finally we start our journey as Bolt, and we quickly realise that we’re playing as a cross between a super seiyen and Sonic the Hedgehog. You fling the little doggy at enemies like you just saw them glance in the dogs general direction and you’re the overly keen owner with poor people skills. The combat as Poppy is even more of a joke: the altercation slows to a crawl whenever an enemy so much as coughs near you, at which point you can press a very generously timed contextual button press. Poppy then proceeds to randomly dodge around or under said enemy and kills them in one shot. No mess, no fuss, just a 10 year old girl bopping an enemy on the head, then they die...somehow. At times there are even “stealth” sections where Poppy can sneak up behind an unwitting enemy and, once again, one hit kill them. 

I’m not going to mince words. The core mechanics are many, though every single one of them is pretty shallow - like the stealth element mentioned above. You gain abilities that are just power increases on your existing abilities, so now you can fling yourself at the faceless goons with a 10% damage increase. One mechanic I did quite like was the “hacking” mechanic, where you play Enter the Gungeon for roughly a minute. I will say, it doesn’t look good on a game when I’m finding a very small part of it more enjoyable than the actual game. 

The story makes no sense - I have seen Bolt but it was a long time ago and shockingly it didn’t leave a lasting impression. 

Poppy’s dad has been captured for some reason and you have to travel through some random international locations to find him. Seems pretty straight forward. There is one level where Bolt is fighting on the top of a train and after getting to the front it turns out after all that, Poppy had control of the train. If that was the case then why didn’t she stop it before all the attack helicopters showed up?! 

Forgive me if it sounds like I didn’t pay much attention to the story because after the first chapter or so I completely stopped paying attention and just enjoyed the ride.

Bolt is a very unfocused game that doesn’t really give you much direction or incentive beyond “the guy that kidnapped your dad is obviously evil, couldn’t you tell by all the kidnapping.” And to its credit, that’s all the game needs. There’s no point making a masterpiece of a game that’s a movie tie-in because it won’t matter, people will see the movie nature of the game and just inherently judge it as bad. 

Before you start telling me that Bolt is a kids game, I know. Part of the joy I get from these games is knowing that I don’t need to pay attention and it will be over in 6 hours or so. Saying it’s for kids is a bit of a reach however: what child is going to be able to decipher that the puzzle section you need to complete is spread over 4 different screens of the area you’re currently in. And then finding the only way to get to the other screens is by platforming across ledges that are indistinguishable from the scenery you definitely can’t jump on, I tried. Keeping with this, what child wouldn’t get disheartened when they can’t figure out what part of the generic scenery they need to interact with will further the game, especially when the game isn’t keen on telling you shit. Or even that you need to hold some button prompts and keep pressing others when the button prompts are exactly the same. It’s confusing and could be frustrating to someone that isn’t as used to the trial and error style gameplay that the point and click adventure games of the 90s prepared players like me for. 

Overall, Bolt is a 6 hour game, that I can say for sure. If you’re looking for something to kill a section of your day while having a laugh at the dodgy animation, terrible A.I. and poor story then look no further than Bolt. If that’s not good enough for you then it also has a dog in it, which I know for a fact is why the majority of people went to see the film and even entertained the idea of buying this game.

Thanks for reading and if you enjoyed this article feel free to take a look through the many other articles I've written over the last few years. Some are good, most are bad but who cares, you like reading about games and I like writing about them. Also, be sure to give a follow on twitter @gcgamingtank for those rare times we actually tweet.
Happy gaming guys!