Charming concept, but poorly executed for target audience.
You main character that you play as for most of the game is of course Winnie the Pooh. As Pooh, you play through 5 different chapters where you have to help your friends. It may be helping one get ready for a birthday party, or helping Eeyor get a new home. This is done by visiting your other friends, and different locations going on scavenger hunts. You may need to find a crank to lower a bridge, a jar to collect some frogs, or honey to bribe some bees. The concept is quite simple and benign, and amounts to one big search quest.
Along your way there will be obstacles such as Woozles and Heffalumps which you must outrun or out-scare to avoid. You do of course get infinite lives to try as often as you need to, and this is where the game starts to turn away from the target group. It can be tricky to out maneuver your foes. There's also occurrences of quick time events (QTEs) where you have to press a string of buttons in a certain amount of time, and some are even more challenging then games intended for Teen and Adult audiences. Some QTEs will require you to press 2 buttons at the same time. In one instance you had to press a directional button, and a action button while the screen was spinning. So when it's on it's side, you may need to press UP, but the arrow is pointing right.
QTEs aside, there's also 3 buttons with actions assigned to them, when there really didn't need to be. I could easily see how it could have been mapped to just one. Quick time events, and control schemes using multiple buttons can be difficult concepts for a toddler to grasp.
And really, a game with this coat of paint on it, set in this world is really meant for kids that young. Many older kids would likely get bored quickly with the tasks at hand. And if the goals don't bore them, the load times definitely will. Each chapter is broken up into about half a dozen areas, and each area is only about 150% the size of what can fit on your TV screen at once. So each world to explore in each chapter is pretty small. But when you move from area to area, there's loading times. Come on. There no reason to be load times with worlds this small. Kids want to play, not watch load screens. Each one is about 5-10 seconds, which doesn't seem too bad, but when you're constantly moving from area to area, the time adds up quickly.
That's not to say this title is not completely without it's merits. There are mini games that can be played with one or 2 players also available. These games are fairly simple, and easy for younger folks to manage. To me this is what the game really should have been about. More fun simple things geared to the audience in mind. But to play these games you have to first unlock them. What small child wants to work to unlock extra games? Just let them play them from the start.
What you do get from the start is another style of game-play where you can just walk around and watch butterflies, and frogs, and plants. This is a better pace, and more simplistic, but also gets old very fast, even for the easily entertained.
Game-play concerns aside, it does look good. Very colourful, with nice character models. They also got the original voice talent to come in to supply the voice overs, so the kids won't be disappointed in that department. It's just too bad that the overall sound is so quiet, and the soundtrack is bare. There's minimal music, and lots of room to improve the ambient sounds. I mean, they do live in a forest; let's get some birds chirping, leaves rustling, and toads croaking.
A refreshing concept that I can appreciate, but the focus seemed to have gotten lost as to who this game was meant for.