Designers of 'Elebits' toss around fun twists

Innovative Wii game rises above weak plot

Brian D. Crecente, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 22, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

• 0 Comments
• Email
• Print

The television lay on its side. The grandfather clock was toppled into the corner. A collection of books, pots, dishes and pizza boxes lay scattered across the room.

But I still couldn't find where that little noise was coming from.

I called my son over to help me.

"Grab this piano, help me throw it over there."

Two beams, one red, one blue, attached to the baby grand and it went soaring over our heads, tumbling across the living room and into the dining room.

Sitting on its green haunches, the tiny Elebit remained frozen in place, an exclamation point floating over its head. I smiled and zapped the little thing with my remote.

Elebits is one of the first games for Nintendo's Wii that actually uses the system's potential for enormous innovation in a way that doesn't get boring or trite in a few minutes.

Built from the ground up for the Wii and its motion-sensing controllers, the game has you ransacking rooms in search of tiny electricity-producing critters.

While the point of the game is supposed to be about capturing these multihued Elebits, the real fun is in tearing a room apart to find them.

You use the system's remote to aim at just about anything in the room and grab hold of it with a colored beam that looks like something out of Ghostbusters. Once you lock on, you can drag it, move it gently or just fling the thing across the room.

As you move through the room, tossing its contents, you come across more and more of these Elebits. Capturing them is as simple as zapping them, though some can move quite quickly.

To keep the game interesting, the designers threw in some neat twists.

While just about everything in a room is movable, you don't initially have the strength to move it. That increases as you capture more and more of the creatures.

Your beam's electrical current also grows as you play.

This helps you power up the various electrical items in the room. Once powered up, the electrical devices usually spew out an assortment of dazed Elebits for you to capture.

The game also has a neat assortment of items you can use during play. Some attract or stun Elebits, others dampen noise or help you target multiple creatures.

As the game progresses, the initially simple goals of each level become increasingly difficult and more complex. In the later stages of the game you have to be careful not to break too many things, make too much noise or have the increasingly angry Elebits take out your beam-producing weapon.

The game stretches the legs of the Wii's motion-sensing and it does so without forgetting that a modicum of plot and constant twists are necessary to keep a gamer interested.

While a bulk of my time was spent playing through the game by myself, it does include multiplayer options. You can take up to three of your friends back into a room and compete to see who can collect the most Elebits first. But only one person at a time can control movement around the room, which makes this mode a bit frustrating.

The game's plot is also a bit weak, and the voice-acting is horrendous. Fortunately, you don't have to suffer through much of either.

The graphics are fun and imaginative while still capturing the feel of a real room and the collection of things that fill it.

Elebits is the first title on the Wii (besides possibly The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Madden) that seems capable of holding gamers' attention for weeks on end.

Despite the plot and voice-acting, Konami's skillful mix of playful elements manages to make a game that might rank up there with other classic and creative games such as Katamari Damacy and Loco Roco.

Elebits

• Rating: Everyone

• Platform: Wii

• Grade: B

• What we liked: Innovative and fun game play

• What we didn't like: Sparse multiplayer support, bad voice acting, lackluster plot

Featured

• Holiday movies

  

  Check out our movie page to read reviews and see your holiday options.

• Holiday Lights

  

  Is your house the jolliest on the block? Submit your holiday lights display.

• Mount Crushmore

  

  Which four Broncos greats should be immortalized on Mount Crushmore? Vote here.

• Broncos-Jets Action

  

  Visit our photo galleries for some hard-hitting action photos from Sunday's game.

• Bronco Dean's rant

  

  Listen to Bronco Dean's midweek rant on the Jets.

• Rocky Multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.

• Stein's View

  

  Editorial cartoons by Ed Stein

• Holiday Gift Guide

  

  Looking to get a jump-start on the holiday shopping season?

• The Rocky @ 150 Years

  

  Read the Rocky's coverage of Colorado's cannibal, Alfred Packer, in 1886.