Chibi-Robo! (GC, 2005)
Graphics-7.5 Sound-8.5 Control-6.5 Challenge-6.5 Story-7
Level Design-6.5 Frustration-7/7.5* Fun-6.5 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-6.5
*100%
+
Unusual premise (a family with some relationship problems buys a small companion robot for their daughter who the player controls, goal is to make/keep the family members happy as you learn more about their lives and explore their house) and setting (a single suburban house and backyard that you explore as a small robot)
Some RPG & AA elements (leveling by performing positive actions and finishing quests which yields happy points - trade these in at your "home base" to gain life bar upgrades and tools/abilities, can buy other items (tools (ladder and bridge items, warp points, trauma suit can be used to warp back to your base/house), weapons, vehicles) via the shop in your base with gained money or bolts), upgradeable weapon (charge shot and range), a few hidden paths)
Good art direction and nice overall animation
Some good humour (silly and over the top - anime-style, superhero and guru parodies, the war between the toy soldiers and the family dog)
Unusual bittersweet and sometimes mysterious tone (family's personal issues, the music, flashback story bits, how giga-robo is introduced is quite well done; almost everything ends on a happy or sentimental note though)
Minor puzzle element to getting around the house and some decent spatial awareness ones when it comes to getting to the frog rings and certain other items as well as a decent matching/timing puzzle in the UFO
NPCs with schedules that change a bit as you progress the story
Find/buy a few tools and suits used for exploration and traversal (ladders and bridges, the blaster at a few points to remove obstacles or hit switches, spoon - dig holes in soft dirt (for planting seeds) or dig up buried objects, radar - pinpoint the location of something hidden such as doors, frog suit - talk to any frog+the Bluebird and Jenny, alien ear chip - understand alien speech; can only equip one tool and costume at a time)
Can see your avatar when it's behind objects
Forgiving betting mini-game (2x money if you win, 10% of bet back as happy points if you lose)
Decent level of world interaction (feeding the fish and other animals, getting reactions from posing in front of NPCs, etc.)
Some shortcuts (not quite enough of them though)
Some minor layout differences between day- and nighttime
Decent map system (detailed and zoomable - really a zoomed out overhead view camera rather than a map, shows most quest items), most quest items are highlighted when looking around in FP mode if there is line of sight), Radar tool - detects nearby items
Some warp points/teleporters (only from the bottom to the top of stairs though and you have to buy them with bolts that you grind for), some memorable characters and locations (Sophie, Mort, Sunshine, Jenny, the parody chars / the castle model, the past (uses time travel for another flashback scene of sorts with a basic puzzle via a found UFO in the backyard; similar to Day of the Tentacle)), the conclusion of the free rangers side quest,
Good cutscenes overall (some are overly drawn out), in-game epilogue (not much to it though and the spydorz are still around)
+/-
Partially open-ended structure (some key/quest item gating in that you can't go into the foyer before learning to pose or into the kitchen before posing in front of sophie for example - can get the chibi-blaster and go outside before doing this; the living room is a hub for the first floor while the foyer is a hub for the second though some other rooms also connect to more than one room, have to get the giga-battery before you can get the living room ladder?, can't buy the kitchen or foyer ladders before the living room one, can only buy a 1-2 different traversal tools at a time in the shop)
Pretty frequent save points placed at outlets in the house which also serve as battery recharge points (3 slots, shows collecting and leveling progress as well as time taken), Can get auto-revived with a bit of health if you buy the chibi-battery (about an hour into the game; Zelda 3) - one use item only though which is annoying considering its price+you can only buy one at a time
Side quest focus (mostly fetch quests, some mini-games including two races that you buy vehicles for - can't use them outside of these)
Collecthathon (happy points and money are often gained by walking around and picking stuff up and you need these to progress, reactivating Giga Robo costs 10k, etc.; optional: 6 colored blocks, 20 frog rings for jenny, stickers)
Partially inspired by Toy Story (talking toys - who also hide that they're alive from the human family - and the suburban house setting)
Pretty handholdy early on and from time to time later on as well (your flying helper called telly vision talks a lot)
Unlimited lives however you lose some money from dying and you always restart back at your base
Can't move while looking around in FP mode
In-game manual however it can only be accessed in the living room at night
The game plays a short ditty when moving around (similar to Dig Dug or Dragon Slayer 1) which changes instruments depending on the surface as well as tempo depending on your speed - doesn't sync to the background music though. Picking up the cord makes you move a little bit faster
No urgency to the dehydrated frog quest
Semi-silent protagonist (can only say yes/no and use poses with different suits to get a reaction out of NPCs), Can't make your helper ask other toys to carry you or help you in a fight
Can't grab ledges and climb them while flying (can be annoying when trying to reach a platform away from and below you and it being just outside of your reach and chibi-robo actually can grab a ledge if you were standing on its platform)
Garbage+coins+spots respawn in the same spots (good in that it's easy to slowly grind money and exp but also makes exploring for them less interesting)
Some aspects of the visuals look more realistic than others
Random enemy encounters which you can escape from, can't control telly vision to look around in a room, squirter is used like a key only, one short 2.5D segment with a stealth element in the kitchen sink drain (not much to it sadly), some mini-games (basic planting and cooking (burgers) mini-games - meh, rain dance mini-game - decent, ranger training - ok, space scramble rail shooter race - decent, game of chicken (brake later than the opponent while driving with cars) - meh since you have no control over the actual car)
-
Some control/interface issues (map only shows the current room and not where you haven't been in each one+can't mark points of interest not yet marked on it, unskippable cutscenes and dialogue scenes, can't speed up or skip dialogue on a per sentence/paragraph basis - lots of dialogue in the game (there's also some repeated dialogue for repeated actions like recharging which gets annoying), fall damage - drains the battery, some delay after landing from a jump/fall as well as when picking stuff up or plugging in/unplugging, the lack of a jump button makes climbing platforms kinda slow, kinda slow climbing of pipes/ropes/ladders, slow operating of the ladders and it costs a lot of battery life too, can't pick something up while carrying a tool item or your cord, can't simply press b/cancel to say no when prompted to save for example - happens a lot, overly large hit boxes on some interactive objects - can be facing the other direction and be a few steps away and still trigger examining something, can get hit while selecting an inventory item during the ranger attack at night, the chibi-copter probably should've been a passive ability mapped to its own button so you didn't have to go into the inventory for it, sometimes wonky camera when trying to rotate it while standing in front of walls - could've made the wall semi-transparent and had the camera go into it, kinda slow climbing of ladders and ropes, can't jump off of a ladder and start floating in mid-air, shop menu doesn't wrap around)
Early gameplay is kind of boring (mostly going around cleaning up garbage and dirt spots, having to pick up the plug to move faster gets a bit tedious, having to throw garbage one type at a time in the garbage can), Most side quests are basic fetch quests
Annoying sfx when near death
Double time limit (the robot avatar runs on energy which needs to be recharged frequently early on, day/night cycle (only 15 mins per segment at first, can buy items that make time pass faster or slower but it takes a long time, can't skip ahead besides when using the pajama which you get in the late-game - should've been an early- or mid-game suit) - leads to backtracking though if you skip doing most sidequests until after the finale you'll at least have unlimited battery life/HP. Would've been better if the outlets were also checkpoints
Some other tedious aspects (waiting for another dog bone to show up if you used up the first one, even tiny obstacles need to be jumped over which is done by moving towards them until a jump meter charges up - breaks flow, the default battery doesn't last long enough and the first two upgrades are too minor, the chibi-battery which resurrects you only restores 200 to the meter, repeated quest-related messages like the noise from the foyer room pause gameplay, can't use the trauma suit pose if too low on energy - one of its main purposes would be to go back and charge before death, the swing in the basement being about to snap is explained to you later on instead of the game rewarding curiosity when you first find it, can carry the giga-charger and pirate ship but not the ladders - means you have to buy 3 separate ladders, the charging the giga-battery cutscene is rather slow, "you've recharged x times" - why do I need to know each time?, various coin rooms don't feel worth getting to - low reward and you have to fall down and climb back up again which is slow, slow climbing of the basement and foyer stairs - can eventually warp up to the top of these, no movement speed upgrades - backtracking through rooms gets boring, if you press the button a few times when trying to disconnect from an outlet there's a cutscene where a metal plate falls on your head which repeats each time - why?)
Various fake dialogue choices (whether to pick up the flower in the beginning or who to give it to for example or some parts of the tea chat with the mom, princess pitts encounter, etc.)
The repetitive pretend language gets a bit annoying after a while
Some trial & error (kinda hard to tell what to do when you're at the point where you get the radar, learning posing mini-game - no countdown and small time window, sometimes need to talk to an NPC twice to trigger the next scripted event, can pull out the drawers to create a staircase in the living room (same with certain bricks in the basement walls which are kinda hard to spot - since the game mentions a ladder you might thank that's what you're supposed to use here), the timer items don't stack if you buy more than one?, have to talk to the frog in the bedroom at night to trigger the next event in that quest - nothing happens if you try to squirt it, finding all the 4 crew members for the captain and some of the hidden coin rooms)
Overly binary difficulty spike when first entering the foyer at night - can't avoid the ranger shots nor take them out+invincibility time is super short
The vehicles can only be used for mini-games - not driven around freely
Not enough to the chibi-door rooms (just a small room with weird atmosphere and a few coins - could've been some sort of combat or platforming challenge)
Sometimes striking a pose yields no reaction at all (tea chat with the mom) - annoying when it costs HP/energy
Sometimes can't interact with something for seemingly no reason and sometimes can for seemingly no reason
No reward for getting all the stickers, No special reward for getting all the frog rings (just a sticker; you do get some money and exp from giving them to Jenny though), No special reward for finding all the coin rooms - just a sticker and 1k exp
Combat is a bit too easy and simplistic (no strafing, blocking, dodging or even jumping plus the beams automatically home in on the enemies)
Some plot oddities (how did the mom end up with this dad to begin with?, weird how the mom doesn't notice the knocked out frog in the bedroom, time automatically passes to daytime after activating giga-robo), invisible walls above the fence in the backyard, using the ladders and bridges doesn't really increase in complexity over the course of the game, easy boss, have to grind to get the super suit before the finale (it's not needed though), the bird in the tree+dog in the past are basically locked doors blocking your path plus you can't use alternate methods to move them (the game is also inconsistent in that the bird reacts to getting shot when the dog and some other NPC don't),
Bugs:
-The battle encounter music disappears too quickly when moving away from them and then doesn't restart even as you're fighting the enemies unless you move really close to their spawning points
-If you warp back to your base after first meeting the aliens (to get the ear chip) then the next story trigger doesn't activate - have to re-enter it
Level Design-6.5 Frustration-7/7.5* Fun-6.5 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-6.5
*100%
+
Unusual premise (a family with some relationship problems buys a small companion robot for their daughter who the player controls, goal is to make/keep the family members happy as you learn more about their lives and explore their house) and setting (a single suburban house and backyard that you explore as a small robot)
Some RPG & AA elements (leveling by performing positive actions and finishing quests which yields happy points - trade these in at your "home base" to gain life bar upgrades and tools/abilities, can buy other items (tools (ladder and bridge items, warp points, trauma suit can be used to warp back to your base/house), weapons, vehicles) via the shop in your base with gained money or bolts), upgradeable weapon (charge shot and range), a few hidden paths)
Good art direction and nice overall animation
Some good humour (silly and over the top - anime-style, superhero and guru parodies, the war between the toy soldiers and the family dog)
Unusual bittersweet and sometimes mysterious tone (family's personal issues, the music, flashback story bits, how giga-robo is introduced is quite well done; almost everything ends on a happy or sentimental note though)
Minor puzzle element to getting around the house and some decent spatial awareness ones when it comes to getting to the frog rings and certain other items as well as a decent matching/timing puzzle in the UFO
NPCs with schedules that change a bit as you progress the story
Find/buy a few tools and suits used for exploration and traversal (ladders and bridges, the blaster at a few points to remove obstacles or hit switches, spoon - dig holes in soft dirt (for planting seeds) or dig up buried objects, radar - pinpoint the location of something hidden such as doors, frog suit - talk to any frog+the Bluebird and Jenny, alien ear chip - understand alien speech; can only equip one tool and costume at a time)
Can see your avatar when it's behind objects
Forgiving betting mini-game (2x money if you win, 10% of bet back as happy points if you lose)
Decent level of world interaction (feeding the fish and other animals, getting reactions from posing in front of NPCs, etc.)
Some shortcuts (not quite enough of them though)
Some minor layout differences between day- and nighttime
Decent map system (detailed and zoomable - really a zoomed out overhead view camera rather than a map, shows most quest items), most quest items are highlighted when looking around in FP mode if there is line of sight), Radar tool - detects nearby items
Some warp points/teleporters (only from the bottom to the top of stairs though and you have to buy them with bolts that you grind for), some memorable characters and locations (Sophie, Mort, Sunshine, Jenny, the parody chars / the castle model, the past (uses time travel for another flashback scene of sorts with a basic puzzle via a found UFO in the backyard; similar to Day of the Tentacle)), the conclusion of the free rangers side quest,
Good cutscenes overall (some are overly drawn out), in-game epilogue (not much to it though and the spydorz are still around)
+/-
Partially open-ended structure (some key/quest item gating in that you can't go into the foyer before learning to pose or into the kitchen before posing in front of sophie for example - can get the chibi-blaster and go outside before doing this; the living room is a hub for the first floor while the foyer is a hub for the second though some other rooms also connect to more than one room, have to get the giga-battery before you can get the living room ladder?, can't buy the kitchen or foyer ladders before the living room one, can only buy a 1-2 different traversal tools at a time in the shop)
Pretty frequent save points placed at outlets in the house which also serve as battery recharge points (3 slots, shows collecting and leveling progress as well as time taken), Can get auto-revived with a bit of health if you buy the chibi-battery (about an hour into the game; Zelda 3) - one use item only though which is annoying considering its price+you can only buy one at a time
Side quest focus (mostly fetch quests, some mini-games including two races that you buy vehicles for - can't use them outside of these)
Collecthathon (happy points and money are often gained by walking around and picking stuff up and you need these to progress, reactivating Giga Robo costs 10k, etc.; optional: 6 colored blocks, 20 frog rings for jenny, stickers)
Partially inspired by Toy Story (talking toys - who also hide that they're alive from the human family - and the suburban house setting)
Pretty handholdy early on and from time to time later on as well (your flying helper called telly vision talks a lot)
Unlimited lives however you lose some money from dying and you always restart back at your base
Can't move while looking around in FP mode
In-game manual however it can only be accessed in the living room at night
The game plays a short ditty when moving around (similar to Dig Dug or Dragon Slayer 1) which changes instruments depending on the surface as well as tempo depending on your speed - doesn't sync to the background music though. Picking up the cord makes you move a little bit faster
No urgency to the dehydrated frog quest
Semi-silent protagonist (can only say yes/no and use poses with different suits to get a reaction out of NPCs), Can't make your helper ask other toys to carry you or help you in a fight
Can't grab ledges and climb them while flying (can be annoying when trying to reach a platform away from and below you and it being just outside of your reach and chibi-robo actually can grab a ledge if you were standing on its platform)
Garbage+coins+spots respawn in the same spots (good in that it's easy to slowly grind money and exp but also makes exploring for them less interesting)
Some aspects of the visuals look more realistic than others
Random enemy encounters which you can escape from, can't control telly vision to look around in a room, squirter is used like a key only, one short 2.5D segment with a stealth element in the kitchen sink drain (not much to it sadly), some mini-games (basic planting and cooking (burgers) mini-games - meh, rain dance mini-game - decent, ranger training - ok, space scramble rail shooter race - decent, game of chicken (brake later than the opponent while driving with cars) - meh since you have no control over the actual car)
-
Some control/interface issues (map only shows the current room and not where you haven't been in each one+can't mark points of interest not yet marked on it, unskippable cutscenes and dialogue scenes, can't speed up or skip dialogue on a per sentence/paragraph basis - lots of dialogue in the game (there's also some repeated dialogue for repeated actions like recharging which gets annoying), fall damage - drains the battery, some delay after landing from a jump/fall as well as when picking stuff up or plugging in/unplugging, the lack of a jump button makes climbing platforms kinda slow, kinda slow climbing of pipes/ropes/ladders, slow operating of the ladders and it costs a lot of battery life too, can't pick something up while carrying a tool item or your cord, can't simply press b/cancel to say no when prompted to save for example - happens a lot, overly large hit boxes on some interactive objects - can be facing the other direction and be a few steps away and still trigger examining something, can get hit while selecting an inventory item during the ranger attack at night, the chibi-copter probably should've been a passive ability mapped to its own button so you didn't have to go into the inventory for it, sometimes wonky camera when trying to rotate it while standing in front of walls - could've made the wall semi-transparent and had the camera go into it, kinda slow climbing of ladders and ropes, can't jump off of a ladder and start floating in mid-air, shop menu doesn't wrap around)
Early gameplay is kind of boring (mostly going around cleaning up garbage and dirt spots, having to pick up the plug to move faster gets a bit tedious, having to throw garbage one type at a time in the garbage can), Most side quests are basic fetch quests
Annoying sfx when near death
Double time limit (the robot avatar runs on energy which needs to be recharged frequently early on, day/night cycle (only 15 mins per segment at first, can buy items that make time pass faster or slower but it takes a long time, can't skip ahead besides when using the pajama which you get in the late-game - should've been an early- or mid-game suit) - leads to backtracking though if you skip doing most sidequests until after the finale you'll at least have unlimited battery life/HP. Would've been better if the outlets were also checkpoints
Some other tedious aspects (waiting for another dog bone to show up if you used up the first one, even tiny obstacles need to be jumped over which is done by moving towards them until a jump meter charges up - breaks flow, the default battery doesn't last long enough and the first two upgrades are too minor, the chibi-battery which resurrects you only restores 200 to the meter, repeated quest-related messages like the noise from the foyer room pause gameplay, can't use the trauma suit pose if too low on energy - one of its main purposes would be to go back and charge before death, the swing in the basement being about to snap is explained to you later on instead of the game rewarding curiosity when you first find it, can carry the giga-charger and pirate ship but not the ladders - means you have to buy 3 separate ladders, the charging the giga-battery cutscene is rather slow, "you've recharged x times" - why do I need to know each time?, various coin rooms don't feel worth getting to - low reward and you have to fall down and climb back up again which is slow, slow climbing of the basement and foyer stairs - can eventually warp up to the top of these, no movement speed upgrades - backtracking through rooms gets boring, if you press the button a few times when trying to disconnect from an outlet there's a cutscene where a metal plate falls on your head which repeats each time - why?)
Various fake dialogue choices (whether to pick up the flower in the beginning or who to give it to for example or some parts of the tea chat with the mom, princess pitts encounter, etc.)
The repetitive pretend language gets a bit annoying after a while
Some trial & error (kinda hard to tell what to do when you're at the point where you get the radar, learning posing mini-game - no countdown and small time window, sometimes need to talk to an NPC twice to trigger the next scripted event, can pull out the drawers to create a staircase in the living room (same with certain bricks in the basement walls which are kinda hard to spot - since the game mentions a ladder you might thank that's what you're supposed to use here), the timer items don't stack if you buy more than one?, have to talk to the frog in the bedroom at night to trigger the next event in that quest - nothing happens if you try to squirt it, finding all the 4 crew members for the captain and some of the hidden coin rooms)
Overly binary difficulty spike when first entering the foyer at night - can't avoid the ranger shots nor take them out+invincibility time is super short
The vehicles can only be used for mini-games - not driven around freely
Not enough to the chibi-door rooms (just a small room with weird atmosphere and a few coins - could've been some sort of combat or platforming challenge)
Sometimes striking a pose yields no reaction at all (tea chat with the mom) - annoying when it costs HP/energy
Sometimes can't interact with something for seemingly no reason and sometimes can for seemingly no reason
No reward for getting all the stickers, No special reward for getting all the frog rings (just a sticker; you do get some money and exp from giving them to Jenny though), No special reward for finding all the coin rooms - just a sticker and 1k exp
Combat is a bit too easy and simplistic (no strafing, blocking, dodging or even jumping plus the beams automatically home in on the enemies)
Some plot oddities (how did the mom end up with this dad to begin with?, weird how the mom doesn't notice the knocked out frog in the bedroom, time automatically passes to daytime after activating giga-robo), invisible walls above the fence in the backyard, using the ladders and bridges doesn't really increase in complexity over the course of the game, easy boss, have to grind to get the super suit before the finale (it's not needed though), the bird in the tree+dog in the past are basically locked doors blocking your path plus you can't use alternate methods to move them (the game is also inconsistent in that the bird reacts to getting shot when the dog and some other NPC don't),
Bugs:
-The battle encounter music disappears too quickly when moving away from them and then doesn't restart even as you're fighting the enemies unless you move really close to their spawning points
-If you warp back to your base after first meeting the aliens (to get the ear chip) then the next story trigger doesn't activate - have to re-enter it