An insulting excuse for virtual entertainment, Mr. Bean is an unfinished, horrendously-executed disaster.
What makes the Mr. Bean game so astoundingly stupid is its overly simplistic gameplay which feels like a really long, boring tutorial. The game's elements can be broken up into several sections, so I will explain these one by one.
To commence the review, let's analyse the game's plotline. According to the back of the box, the story of the game is that a "mysterious villain" has apparently kidnapped Teddy, and is willing to give him back if Mr. Bean pays the ransom of 750 cat biscuits. Who is this villain? We don't know, the so-called villain never appears in the game. Why has he/she kidnapped Teddy? We're not told at any point. Why does he/she want cat biscuits as pay? Again, the details aren't given. To put it simply, nothing is explained as to why Mr. Bean has to go on this pathetic quest. Therefore, all we know is Mr. Bean has to go out, get a whole load of cat biscuits, and pay the ransom. And that's pretty much the storyline of the game. But this is only square one.
Next, let's sum up the graphics, which, in my opinion, are too preposterous to bear. As the game is based on the cartoon series, the game was designed to look cartoonish to capture the show's simplistic cartoon look. However, an awkward combination of 3D and 2D causes the game to look like everything is made out of cardboard. This includes cardboard scenery, cardboard platforms, cardboard obstacles and cardboard enemies, each ugly and crudely sculpted in their own way. Walls lack texture, and so have almost painted-on features; terrain is always completely flat like a patterned carpet. Some of the other objects like collectibles and checkpoint markers are designed like plain cardboard cubes with pictures on them.
The levels themselves not only look ugly, but scenery or obstacles are ridiculous. For example, in the early levels (the garden levels) Mr. Bean will frequently be confronted with immense craters in the ground which he my cross via a curiously placed plank. Huh? How did these gaps get there? Other features of Mr. Bean's wonderful home include huge fallen logs, spikes that pop out of the ground and locked fences that can be opened by pushing boxes onto switches (also the "fences" seem to open vertically, thus sinking into the ground, which makes little sense on top of that). I don't know about you, but I think the designers of the game forgot that the levels are meant to be non-fantasy-themed and decided to cover them in booby traps. Or, they could have simply had no intention to design the game imaginatively.
Not even Mr. Bean himself looks right. In the game he is rendered as an emotionless cardboard zombie. His facial expression (a big, disturbing grin and staring eyes) never changes, no matter the situation. Even his movement is flawed. Rather than running like a regular human being, Mr. Bean runs with his arms outstretched, flailing back and forth, and his legs also swing as he hops along like a puppet. If he falls down a crater, he won't scream in fright or even make his well-known scowl. He'll just fall, his dumb grin stretching into his cheeks. If he gets hit by anything, be it a harmless wasp or an explosive, he'll light up red and bounce backwards with an ugly sound effect.
Now, it's the moment you've been waiting for, the gameplay. The gameplay simply involves Mr. Bean plodding through several levels collecting cat biscuits, opening locked chests to find puzzle pieces (all of which look exactly the same), and avoiding various enemies. Yes, you heard me right – I said avoiding. When playing Mr. Bean, you're literally playing as a wimp. Mr. Bean cannot defeat any enemies; he can just stun them.
To do this, Mr. Bean can use three different types of weapons. All have wonderful functions. Insect spray can be equipped to defend against perpetually-spawning insects, and for some reason, it can be used on other enemies too. Frying pans can be used to hit enemies backwards; but these do barely anything to your opponent except stun them. And finally, considered the ultimate weapon in the game, the pirate outfit, which gives Mr. Bean both invincibility and the power to, you guessed it, stun enemies just by running into them. This makes the game so incredibly easy that after a few minutes, you're exhausted at the simplicity. After all, why bother stunning enemies when you can just run past them? The difficulty level never really rises with a level, so very simply you'll find yourself running through lots of low difficulty environments whilst getting no enjoyment or reward from any of them. It's a good thing the game lasts less than an hour.
A few levels also include mild mini-games. Again, these are tedious little activities that won't really grip you or provoke you to play them again. The first one, for example, involves you having to vacuum garden moles from the ground within a time limit. You can get almost every one without even trying, and on top of that, the game provides a map which shows you where to run next. Even if you manage to collect all of them, which isn't too difficult, Mr. Bean will hop up and down in anger with a laughable animation as the time runs out. Mini-games unlock a few things, such as clips from the TV series (watching them is the most exciting part of the game) and maps of previous levels. Gee, getting rewarded with a map of a level you've already completed... interesting.
Nope, the bad points keep coming. There are also several glitches in the game, so I'll name a few. If you continuously mash the X button to make Mr. Bean jump and down a few times, he'll be stuck in this motion and won't stop until he feels like it. Another glitch arises from using trampoline platforms. Often, if Mr. Bean jumps onto a trampoline, he will stand still on it as if it were a regular platform for a few moments, for it to spontaneously start working and propel him into the air. However, the biggest glitch involves the frying pans. You would think the most you can have at one time is 5. But an easy-to-perform glitch lets you have as many as you want. All you need is to have a single frying pan left. If you walk up to an enemy, attempt to hit it, fail, and then quickly press the attack button as it hits you, you'll have hit it twice. Sorry Mario, but the Minus World has some competition: Minus frying pans. Yep. The game developers actually bothered to code the frying pans so that their amount can become negative, and if they do, you can keep hitting enemies until the cows come home – which technically makes unintentional sense.
And to round it all off, there's plenty of annoying, tuneless neighbourhood music that repeats over and over again and will eventually invade your head. There are only two different tracks, both very, very similar to each other that swap back and forth as you venture through the unchallenging cardboard jungles, playing even in what the game seems to think are scary areas, such as the undersized sewer.
When the terrible little game is finished, Mr. Bean will be able to unlock a secret, mystical door... only to find Teddy locked in a cage. The cage opens by itself, Teddy is rescued, and that's pretty much the end of everything. You don't even pay the cat biscuit ransom because the "mysterious villain" never shows up. Was all of that worth it? Nope. Is there any point in playing again? That's pretty self-explanatory. This uninspired conclusion to the adventure demonstrates the fact that the game is dangerously unfinished.
Mr. Bean is a game that will, once played, make you feel disgusted and underwhelmed. Everything about it is detestable. Even the thought of putting the disc into the PlayStation makes me feel cold inside. Take it from me: Don't bother playing this game. OK, for very young children it could be useful as a method of tutoring them at playing a generic run-and-jump game, or if you just want to have a good old laugh with your friends. But if this isn't the case, there's no point in playing it - it's a hopelessly confused catastrophe that'll kill a lot of your brain cells, and there are literally thousands of better options for a decent platformer game.