Bolt PC Review

Posted by Sergiu Petrisor in PC Reviews on Mar 5th, 2009 | 2 responses

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Bolt, the wonder dog who thinks he has super powers, fighting against the green eyed man. At least that was the movie about and I admit I enjoyed it a lot. If you haven’t seen it, check some trailers here and here. But, will the game rise to the popularity of the movie or will it be just one of those games made in a hurry after its movie title? Read more to find out.

For several days now, I’ve been trying to write an article about Bolt – The Videogame, and finally here it is. I saw the movie a while back and I was all excited when the videogame got released (I’m a sucker for videogames after movies). As I started playing, things were looking very promising; nice graphics and a tutorial that teaches you the basics. Penny is a young girl who finds out that her dad (who’s a scientist) was kidnapped by Calico in order to create a lethal weapon that will kill everyone (the mainly used cause). Penny and Bolt prepare a rescue mission to put an end to this evil man. This journey takes Bolt and Penny through some interesting locations, from a Mayan Temple to Russia and China.

Each of our heroes has unique powers and abilities that will help them overcome Calico’s henchmen and advance through story by completing different puzzles. Penny is always carrying a wheelbar, which supposedly “is inspired by her scooter from the movie”. I don’t know about that, but this wheelbar helps her reach higher places, mount on cables, move on walls (when attach spots are available) but it’s also used as a weapon. After about 10 minutes in the game, Penny is awarded with gas bomb and invisibility skills. If you can sneak up on your enemies, and hit them with the wheelbar it will be an instant kill. Due to her invisibility “perk” this will happen like, over 90% of the time because the enemies are stupid. Even if you’re surrounded by 5 henchmen and you go invisible, you can still manage to kill every one of them and don’t get hurt a bit.

As Bolt, you get to use abilities (also presented in the movie) like Super Speed, which will make you run faster (?!?!-you will almost never use it), Super Bark – this ability is very often used because of some enemies that move very fast (seems they move even faster than Bolt who has the Super Speed ability) and cannot be attacked, therefore you must first daze them and only then they will be vulnerable. Among Bolt’s abilities, he can become invulnerable for as long as he wishes and he can shoot laser from his eyes “melting enemies in just one glance”.

Using abilities will consume energy, represented by a green bar in the upper right corner of the screen. This bar can be upgraded, as well as the health bar when finding power upgrades scattered around the map. As an achievement maniac, I tried to find them all, but it’s ok if you don’t, the game doesn’t change one bit.

It seems that the game is targeted for a E10+ audience, so Avalanche provided us with a little help tool that will show you exactly where you need to go. It consumes energy when activated but I really think there was no need for a feature like that.

A fun feature are the mini-games you have to play in order to advance through the linear story-line, which after completion will be unlocked for you to enjoy over and over again. If you want a speed run, you can try these CHEATS inside the extra -> cheats submenu, and get unlimited energy, unlimited health, all the mini-games and more.

… more screenshots here

Now that the fun part is over, let’s see the game from another angle. If we are to look at the game’s control scheme, we cannot help but wonder, who decided to create something like that?

Check this out: to walk you use W,A,S,D and for attacks Numpad 1,2 and 3. To go stealth, you must press ‘Z’ and keep it pressed to remain stealthy. I don’t know about you but I find it very uncomfortable to move around with W,A,S,D while I have to keep the Z key pressed. They could assign it to Shift or whatever. The bad news, you’re stuck with the default configuration because Avalanche never thought that someone might want to change it. Why bother?

I know that graphic in a game isn’t everything, but is that supposed to look like grass or is it a blurry texture with some plants here and there? In the beginning of the article I said “things were looking very promising; nice graphics…”, but as you progress through the game, graphics deteriorate and textures look like they’re out of the washer.

Another thing on the bad list is the voice acting. Bolt’s voice doesn’t sound one bit like the movie version but they got Penny’s voice right (the game title is Bolt, not Penny). The music is adequate for the game, and fits really well with the atmosphere and gameplay.

If we are to add things up, Bolt is another game after a movie, which seems to be rushed out from production, just to have the movie’s release date. If you’re going to create a game, make it worth. Rather than spending $29.99 buying the game, I would just stick in buying some popcorn and renting the movie instead.