Disney Chicken Little: Ace in Action

Let me be upfront: I did not expect much from a Chicken Little tie-in from 2006, and this game mostly confirms that expectation while occasionally surprising you just enough to keep the controller in hand. Ace in Action is a third-person and top-down arcade shooter spread across 24 levels set on planets like Pluto, Saturn, Mars, and the Moon. The structure borrows heavily from the Ratchet and Clank playbook, with three distinct character modes rotating through the campaign: Ace on foot blasting enemies with a laser rifle, Runt driving an armored tank, and Abby piloting a spaceship in a top-down space-shooter segment. Six boss fights punctuate the run, and the bosses are the most mechanically interesting thing the game offers, well-animated and genuinely punishing in a way that catches you off-guard for a kids title. From a pure shooting mechanics standpoint, the Ace on-foot sections are the strongest. He carries a default blaster with unlimited ammo and can switch to secondary weapons recharged by power-up drops from defeated enemies. That pick-up loop, destroy enemy, grab drop, fuel the next weapon, is the closest the game gets to a real feedback rhythm. Runt's tank mode feels similar in layout and pacing, differentiated mainly by movement speed and weapon spread. Neither mode has depth worth discussing seriously. Abby's spaceship sections are the weakest slot in the rotation: slow, side-scrolling, and repetitive in a way that makes you watch the level counter. Her air-to-air laser and air-to-ground missiles sound good on paper but the engagement range and enemy density never stress-test the loadout. Between levels you can spend collected golden acorns on weapon upgrades, extra health, and cosmetic unlocks like soundtracks and artwork. There is a light time-attack scoring layer that rewards clearing levels under a target time, which gives speed-run minded players something to chase, but it is thin. The PC version specifically has a draw distance issue where environmental pop-in is noticeably worse than the PS2 build, though community-made file edits have been circulating since 2022 to partially fix that fog and render distance problem. Worth knowing before you boot it on modern hardware. The multiplayer mode exists but it is underdeveloped to the point where it barely registers as a feature. Do not buy this expecting any meaningful co-op or versus content. This is a short single-player game, roughly two to three hours on a first run, aimed squarely at younger players or adults with a nostalgia attachment to the film. The voice cast includes Adam West as Ace, which is a genuinely fun piece of production value that the gameplay does not quite live up to. Repetition sets in fast, the on-foot and tank modes blur together, and the PC port has technical rough edges that a mid-2000s Disney budget never patched. If you are a parent looking for something mild and structured for a kid, it does what it says. If you came here looking for a shooter with any mechanical ceiling, close the tab. Fred, Scout Team