Review: Chibi-Robo
If you love adorable Nintendo games that are meant for eight-year-old little girls, then give Chibi-Robo! a try.
Chibi-Robo! Belongs to the small but exclusive fraternity of quirky free-roaming nonlinear Japanese games, which are so far out of the traditional box that many gamers tend to love them or hate them. While weird Japanese games were in vogue several years ago, how do these games rate in today's age of traditional and niche laden lineup of gaming titles?
In Chibi-Robo, you'll take control of the titular character as it is brought into the Sanderson household. It's your job to make the family happy by helping out wherever you can by cleaning, finding lost objects, and solving personal problems of your adopted patriarchs. The more problems you solve, the more Happy Points you will be awarded which will level you up with the ultimate aim of becoming the top Chibi-Robo ever.
Isn't This How Isacc Asimov's Book Started Out?
As Chibi-Robo, you'll have an arsenal of tools and abilities at your disposal to facilitate your life of familial bondage. You'll have a small depository of default abilities at your disposal in the beginning of the game, such as, Chibi-Vision which points out objects that are interactable, and you can limitedly climb up, pull, push, and pick up and store objects for future use or disposal. Further on into your life of utilitarian serfdom, you'll learn that the toys of the house take on a life of their own when the humans are away and they will help you acquire Chibi-Gear and tools which will augment your default skills with additional platforming, and cleaning abilities, and you'll get some nifty costumes too.
But that's not all; your life as Chibi-Robo is constrained by battery life and an in-game time limits. You'll have to pay attention to your battery gauge and the in-game clock. If your battery dies, you'll lose some of your Moolah (in-game currency) and Happy Points. Additionally, the in-game clock keeps track of daytime and nighttime. Certain time periods have specific puzzles and items exclusively available to them. You'll have to juggle battery life with in-game time and room to room exploration to solve some of the more obscure problems and puzzles.
Never send a human to do a machine's job --Agent Smith
While the game engine is solid, there really doesn't seem to be any real point to the entire game. You just go around acquiring tools to clean, collect Moolah, and solve problems for the sake of being a slave to the most dirty and dysfunctional family in all of Nintendo-dom. It's a drag to pick up trash in real life, so why would you volunteer to be a fictional family's maid for several dozen hours of your life. The entire premise of this game is pointless and nauseating. Additionally, everybody speaks in that ever so annoying Animal Crossings speak, which compounds the throbbing headache of trudging through the games multiple in-game days and battery recharging cycles. Furthermore, the camera system has clipping problems and tends to be counter intuitive around big obstacles.
If you love adorable Nintendo games that are meant for eight-year-old little girls, then give Chibi-Robo! a try. Otherwise, steer clear of this mind numbingly droll title. It'll make you crave the gaming moral depravity of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas after a few hours of playing a diminutive stain remover in a house full of whacked out hippie slobs.
![Screen Update: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway [PS3]](/screens/115001/183409-1-1.jpg)
![Screen Update: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway [Xbox 360]](/screens/115002/183408-1-1.jpg)
![Screen Update: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway [PC]](/screens/115021/183410-1-1.jpg)
![Screen Update: Spectral Force 3 [Xbox 360]](/screens/140501/183308-1-1.jpg)
