The Collection Chamber: DISNEY'S THE LION KING: OPERATION PRIDELANDS

The Pridelands need YOU!

The reign of Scar is over and the animals that fled the hyenas can now come home. Help Timon & Pumbaa bring these animals back to the Pridelands.

Are you up for the challenge?

Be briefed by the Wise Old Rhino and then set off in the company of Timon & Pumbaa. Only after convincing the other animals can you venture into the lair of Makuru Tse Tse... if you dare! Don't mess with the best; with your help can Pumbaa beat pesky Junior?
Beginner or Expert? Choose the level of difficulty that suits you best.
Featuring more than 20 exciting activities and dozens of zany characters.
Put yourself to the test and take the fun general knowledge animal quiz!
Complete the whole adventure and unlock four new missions!

~ from the back of the box

The mini-games found in Disney's vast array of educational titles are universally very easy. It's by design. They're primarily aimed at little kids, so the only real thing your average Disney Adult will be interested in is the quality of the art. If it's quintessentially Disney, that's all you need really. Generally, they're as easy on the eyes as they are easy to play. Remove both of these selling points, and what do you have? The answer is Disney's The Lion King: Operation Pridelands.

Released in 2004, the designers had 10 years to get familiar with the film's art style. And they chose to ignore it. The hand-painted backgrounds are lovely, but they are marred by some bizarrely designed pre-rendered sprites. Even the leads that are Timon and Pumbaa don't come out unscathed. Being obviously created inside of a computer, each character has an uncanny scrappiness to them that couldn't be further from the nostalgic hand-drawn cells of the Disney Renaissance. If anything, they look closer to a Klasky Csupo cartoon like The Wild Thornberrys if put through the CGI wringer. It's ugly, off-putting and, in the case of the Rock'n'cha the disco-loving chameleon, down right freaky.

Click on tribal symbols to knock Congo the elephant off his platform. Street Fighter, this is not (left).

Unleash Timon and Pumbaa's flatulence to help Mimipo the hippo find her mother. R-Type, this is not (right).

But what of the games? Well, there's a fair amount of them, each with their own introduction to further the story so you can't knock it for its content. It takes place not long after the events of the original move. The animals fled the Pride Lands and you have to convince seven animals of them to return now that the hyenas have been driven out. Each animal is assigned their own mini-game or two with varying gameplay that's all over the difficulty and enjoyability spectrum. Gozi the frog is trapped in a termite mound so you have to drag the flying bugs towards Pumbaa's mouth to convince the termite queen to let her free. Daddy and Mommy Croc and their family of crocodiles need you to uncover the imposter child before subjecting you to a match-the-symbol diving game. Congo the elephant wants to fight, so time to click some shapes for some gnarly attack moves. These ones play alright, but I'd like to talk a little bit more in depth with some of the other more mechanically problematic encounters.

In order to locate her mother trapped deep under a lake, Timon and Pumbaa accompany Mimipo the hippopotamus through one of the most awkwardly controlled shoot-'em-ups I've ever played. Like every other game in this collection, it is played entirely with the mouse. And boy was this a bad decision. You control all three characters at once, each one swimming towards the cursor in the three underwater levels. Should you click on whoever is swimming in the rear, they'll become the leader which also changes their attack. Mimiko has a spin move that harms any bad guy she touches. Timon can burp out a flurry of quick-shot bubbles to down single enemies while Pumbaa's sluggish fart bubble will hit all creatures unlucky enough to be in its path. To attack, click on the character who's in front. As you can tell by all this clicking and mouse pointing, it's rather difficult to control. In fact, it's an absolutely insane way to play a schmup and I only got through these levels out of sheer will power.

If parents cannot single out the imposter child, what chance do you do? Even with the badly-worded logic puzzles (left).
I've never encountered such rage-inducing gameplay than when I had to play basketball with a snake (right).

Then there's that freaky chameleon who is actually the most memorable character in the game. He's obviously had a lot of effort put into him as there are four sections to his plotline. That's more than anyone else in the game. At first he want's you to go on a treasure hint to find three flowers found in the background of other areas. These are needed for his costume fetish, but once this is done he needs you to collect the rest of them that have somehow been strewn across a crocodile-infested lake. As Pumbaa in a makeshift inflatable rubber ring, you swim around to collect the items while avoiding any gnashers who are waiting to rip them back from you. Collect all of them and Rock'n'cha will demand Timon try them on by matching the clothes to his description. Not only that, but he'll then make that sardonic meercat dance for him. Sounds like he's freaky in more ways than one. This dancing mini-game isn't rhythm based as you might expect, but yet another variation of that matching symbol game found while diving with the crocodile. Coloured shapes will appear on the right and you have to match them by popping the bubbles to the left. Because they're inside rather small, moving bubble that gradually float off-screen, you'll find you may have to sit and wait for its distorted twin to appear. Sometimes it will take a few awkward seconds of listening to that elevator-styled approximation of the Lion King score before the right bubble floats up. At least Rock'n'cha's smooth moves are 'proper sick' and the game works like it's supposed to.

I can't say that for mini-game assigned to Kasai the snake. In fact, try as I might I couldn't get close to passing it even after an embarrassingly long amount of time trying. The aim is to feed the hungry python some fruit so he has enough energy to climb down that tree return to the Pride Lands. The problem with this game of pseudo-basketball is that it takes over control of your mouse, making it drunkenly swerve across the screen. You have to click on Kasai's moth to succeed a goal but good luck doing it once let alone the seven he's asking for. I swear, the only shots I landed were pure coincidence. There's no tactic to it at all, and you can't take your time either as Timon will take a shot on his own and invariably miss. I say leave him.

Part of me hopes that this is down to some issues running it on modern systems. It's not like it runs perfectly regardless of my attempts. The only noticeable I found is rather minor, however, and it takes place in the menu screens. Unfortunately, text doesn't show up but it's not exactly hard to navigate. Hover the mouse over each button and a helpful narrator tells what it is anyway. Regardless, something tells me the basketball mini-game plays exactly like it's supposed to. It is because of this game that I couldn't see all that Operation Pridelands had to offer. You have to pass this test before you can visit Makuru Kasiksi the spider and whatever game she has planned for you. She's the last animal you visit in the Adventure mode.

This top-down mini-game is expanded into a time-trial race if you're able to unlock it in the Bonus Game section (right).
Match symbols to pull off some cool dance moves with an alien... I mean chameleon (right).

By not getting past this snake, I'm also locked out of the four high-score-focussed bonus games awarded once Adventure Mode is complete. These are variations of what's come before, but a little more in-depth from what I can tell. The underwater shoot-'em-up gets expanded, the troublesome game of basketball turns into multiple rounds of bug-splatting, the rubber ring river becomes a time-trialled race around an obstacle course, and a spider's web becomes a maze in which to free some terrified fireflies. There's an impressive amount of content for an educational mini-game collection aimed at kids, but with the bizarre choice of controls and high difficulty in some of them, it tarnishes the package somewhat.

So, Disney's The Lion King: Operation Pridelands ends up being a mixed bag of wildly different fruit. I guess Disney fans will still get some merit out of it, even with the awfully written, badly acted and unskippable cutscenes that are some of the most annoying I've ever encountered. I doubt it would offer up as much nostalgia for the movie as any of the many similar titles based on the classic movie. It's not like there's a dearth of them anyway. I expected more. Disappointing.

To download the PC game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber runs natively on Windows 10 using IMGDrive Portable to mount the CD ISO. French-language manual and English-language Readme file included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 421 Mb. Install Size: 605 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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