Disney's Winnie the Pooh: Rumbly Tumbly Adventure [GC]

Navigating the Hundred Acre Wood is a major pain. It sure looks pretty, but the game world lacks size and complexity. The forest splits between a number of fenced areas, each painfully small. A three-second jog in any direction will cause the game to load a new area. Since each fetch-quest requires you to cross several of these tiny chunks of forest, you'll easily encounter five load screens before finishing the objective. And loading in Rumbly Tumbly Adventure goes slow. Loading each area feels like it takes longer than it should, considering the size of the area, so you can imagine how irritating it would be to have the game load every few minutes, or less, given the situation.

During each fetch quest, Pooh and company encounter a number of obstacles, usually in the form of Heffalumps and Woozles. Each playable character (Piglet, Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger) faces the same obstacles a little differently. Pooh runs from his enemies and scares them away by popping balloons, for example, while Tigger needs to sneak by instead. Piglet actually faces each of his enemies and scares them away by making scary faces. Players accomplish this by pressing button combinations that appear on screen. Unfortunately, none of these encounters provides much challenge. They're all simple, quick and devoid of much fun, boasting as much cerebral involvement as chewing bubblegum.

Perhaps the most engaging challenge in the game is catching butterflies while riding the chronically depressed Eeyore. With net in hand, Pooh runs around the screen chasing after elusive butterflies, usually under some kind of time limit. It's fun the first time, but the activity wears thin excessively fast. Pooh also needs to solve a few puzzles, yet none of them require much thought. At times, the road to a character's house will be blocked by boxes, which Pooh then needs to push aside to proceed. Since each roadblock is comprised of three or so boxes, there's a good chance no one will have trouble clearing these puzzles in a matter of seconds.

As simple as the gameplay in Rumbly Tumbly Adventure may be, the visuals and sound still impress. The game boasts an awesome sense of style, rekindling memories of the Saturday morning cartoon. Developer Phoenix Studios faithfully recreated everything from the beloved property, from the Hundred Acre Wood to the characters, to the omnipresent narrator. Each of the characters feature silky smooth animation, with voice work matching the quality and charm of the classic show. The game makes extensive use of the infamous "glow" seen in games such as Beyond Good & Evil, so the Hundred Acre Wood looks just as magical as you'd imagine. The FMV sequences in the game also look fantastic. It's just too bad there aren't very many; the game engine handles a bulk of the cinematic duties.

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