It’s time for some more Kingdom Hearts Mini-Games! A series stuffed full of mini-games must be a dream come true for me, right? Wrong. Somehow each mini-game manages to be more boring than the last, and Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories is no different! Having an already weak start from being not a fun game, what could possibly go wrong as we explore the 100 Acre Woods yet again and deal with Pooh Bear’s insatiable thirst for honey and destruction.

Veggie Panic

Your good friend Rabbit is in a bit of a panic, a vegetable panic, as the crops from their fields have apparently gotten loose and are running wild. Well, rolling down a hill in a generally orderly fashion. Pumpkins and cabbages roll down the hill, one by one, and it’s up to Sora to intercept them and knock them to the right or left, respectively. Possibly under the guise to stop the vegetable bombardment, but also as a means of organising the two leafy greens from the orange gourds, as if they were hard to distinguish. Pooh will sometimes stroll haphazardly into the fray to follow a butterfly around. If Pooh manages to align himself with an oncoming vegetable then you’re given the option to throw your keyblade at it to instantly sort it and clear it from the rolling foes. If Pooh gets hit by one of these miscreant ground foods then he’ll roll down with it, and normally into your awaiting face. Which is bad. There’s also carrots that come down in patterns that you’ve no option other to try and weave your small child body between them, all while throwing your keyblade at the oncoming GIANT pumpkin, which is also worth three normal pumpkins.

Out of all the mini-games in this game, it’s probably the most challenging and fun. The longer the game goes on the faster things roll and the more difficult it is to try and catch the veggies. Let too many through and it’s game over.

Tigger’s Jump-a-Thon

It’s a memory game! Tigger takes to four tree stumps conveniently in a cross, as well as adorned with the face buttons of the playstation controller, and jumps on these stumps in an order. It’s then up to Sora, with Pooh in hand, to jump in the same order as some kind of proof of jumping ability. Thankfully you don’t have to rely on the awkward jumping and platforming of the Kingdom Hearts base games and instead just have to simply tap the buttons the logs represent. You don’t even have to wait for the long jump animation to finish before inputting the next, allowing you to rapidly tap in a long slew of commands and then go away and make a drink or something as it plays itself out. With each new round one or two more prompts are added to the command chain and your memory is tested like you never knew a tiger could. Or at least, it would be if a pen and paper didn’t exist and you simply write down the commands as they appear and become the greatest memory machine that’s ever happened. Where the game should speed up the further you go, it doesn’t and you’re left to watch the same long jumps for hundreds of instances. It’s more a test of endurance and whether or not you waste away into nothing as everything pans out than a test of memory.

Balloon Glider

I’ve never heard of a better way of ascending a tree infested with razor sharp bees than via balloon. It was a lesson learned in the first Kingdom Hearts and it stays true here. Thankfully instead of trying to awkwardly jump up a tree to help the bear being accosted by bees, you and the bear are now one with up to three balloons. You float up the tree collecting yellow orbs and it’s almost like one of those helicopter games you loved to play as a child, except not as fun or fast paced. You awkwardly hop and bounce your way up the tree trying to weave through the tightly knit branches and patrolling balls of bees. Hit a bee or a branch and one of your balloons pops and you begin to realise that you probably wont survive a fall from this height. That you should probably reconsider hanging out with Pooh as he always manages to get you into these dangerous situations with his crippling honey addiction. That you’ll never see your loved ones ever again as you fell from a tree and broke your back, all for a small yellow bear. But then you come across another balloon in the tree and continue your ascent as if nothing went wrong.

Whirlwind Plunge

Back in the land’s of Pooh’s Mud Chute, no not that one, you thankfully don’t have to relive your memories of the nightmarish hide and seek game from Kingdom Hearts and instead get blasted hundreds of thousands of meters into the sky by an updraft from a well. It’s then up to you and Pooh to plummet to the ground, with no parachute, grabbing as many rings of honey orbs as you can. Are there easier ways of getting honey? Almost certainly. Could Pooh just learn how to farm bees in some kind of hive and elaborate bee suit? Probably. Are we doing that? No. Instead we’re falling to our deaths trying to grab elaborate rings of honey and avoid the other debris that was blasted into the sky. This debris is anything from entire trees to smaller bits of tree and even more bees. At least, their hives. Don’t question the environmental damage that takes place for this elaborate honey harvesting scheme. Pooh is a menace to society and should be stopped. If you get hit by a flying log, instead of probably being completely destroyed by colliding with such mass at such speeds, Pooh comes free from your hand and you can no longer harvest the rings of honey. So you have to reconnect with the glutton in order to continue your death dive for food. Thankfully, it’s a very short game.

Bumble Rumble

Pooh’s final attempt to fill his gullet with honey is his simplest yet. Go up to a tree, at ground level, and just take the honey out of a hole in it. What could go wrong? Bees. Bees descend on you as if you’re some kind of giant, yellow, home invading bear. Which you are. Well, Pooh is. Sora’s goal here is to kill all the bees with his sword before they murder Pooh. If you remember the awkward card based combat from Re:Chain of Memories, it’s that, but bee based. You can link together your cards into specific bee related sleights that can devastate the deadly bees. There’s also a whirlwind attack that simply blows everything around, I guess, sure. There’s also a tactical honey pot that you can call in that launches itself onto Pooh’s head for vital nutrients and health regeneration. There’s something overwhelmingly futile about trying to hit tiny bees with a big key sword but it’s a bit of a mess of a game, although that may come from a lack of memory of the actual systems involved in this forsaken game. The way to win is apparently using the “Honey Storm” sleight to destroy all the bees in a big honey based whirlwind, but that requires remembering how to actually do that, and it’s a lot more satisfying to just simply watch Pooh get stung to death.

That’s it for the mini-games within Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, I’d like to say it was pleasant to revisit the game and the games within the game, but that’d be a lie. Maybe the next installment of Kingdom Hearts will have a 100 Acre Woods that doesn’t make you despair from the awkward honey gathering schemes that Pooh has come up with next. The outside world may be dying from some kind of dark anime corruption, but Tigger needs someone to watch him bounce, which is infinitely more important.