Borderlands Review

Review: Borderlands

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Developer: Gearbox Software

Publisher: 2k Games

Borderlands, produced by Gearbox Software, is one of a select few games that list themselves under the “RPG Shooter” genre. Based around completing quests, receiving loot, leveling up, and playing with friends, Borderlands puts a fairly new twist on an old classic.

Roland the Soldier, Lilith the Siren, Mordecai the Hunter, and Brick the... Brick

Story

As one of four treasure hunters, you arrive on the barren planet of Pandora in search of a relative, a friend, or a man to kill (although it does not tell you this in-game). However, while you are still on the bus, a pale girl starts talking to you through some sort of psychic communication, telling you that you must look for “The Vault”, a hidden warehouse of alien weapons, money, and all other desires. So, understandably, your character instantly forgets about why they are there and the original story that the website seemed to be setting up is completely scrapped in place of this new treasure-hunting one.

One thing that is fairly annoying is that in the intro it shows all four characters riding in the same bus, but once you select your persona, the others are thrown away, never to be seen in single player. The story is told through the main plot quests, although it can be hard to figure out which ones they are, and consists basically of you going into enemy bases, caves, and canyons, killing a boss, getting a part of the vault key, then turning it in. The main storyline will take you around 15 hours to complete, but there is much more to the game.

Gameplay

Tanks, Mining Machines, and Bandits? Oh my.

The gameplay in comparison to other RPG Shooters, such as Fallout 3, was best explained by Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford who had this to say: “The developers of Fallout 3 started with an RPG and added shooter elements, whereas with Borderlands we started with a Shooter and added RPG elements.” For anyone who has played Fallout 3, such as myself (Though only for 4 or 5 hours), the difference is quickly noticeable. The game runs very smoothly, most resembling Unreal Tournament (As it runs off the Unreal Engine), and the brutal man(and skag)slaughter is very satisfying.

The game also boasts to have “more guns than every other FPS combined”, and while this is true, they are simply made in a random stat generator, ending in some weird combinations such as shotguns that shoot rockets, or grenades that jump up in the air and rain lightning. Accuracy, a stat that annoyed me in Fallout makes a return, though it doesn’t affect gameplay quite as much. Having varying accuracy on a shotgun or SMG is fine, and in fact only serves to enhance the gameplay, but when I shoot 5 shots with my sniper directly into a bandit’s chest and they all fly whizzing off into the sunset it can be a tad frustrating.

The most epic boss in the game, this thing is HUUUUGE

Bosses are fun and challenging, although many can be easily beaten by dying, running back to the fight, and sniping them while standing off to the side of the arena. The game also utilizes a vehicle feature, and thank god, it would take forever to run everywhere, the developers spent a lot of time making the game world huge. Although there is only one vehicle, it is pretty fun to splatter 5 spiderants in succession, but not so much when you hit a sixth and the damage your vehicle takes from hitting enemies causes it to explode and completely kill your character. Speaking of dying, this game implements a really cool feature, the “second wind”. When your character loses all his health, you enter a state of dying, but if you kill an enemy in the allotted time you will receive a rejuvenation and can continue to fight, with the downside of reviving with fairly low health.

Multiplayer

This section of the review will be noticeably less developed than the rest as for some reason the developers decided to run the PC multiplayer through Gamespy instead of Steam, so there were major server issues and it was impossible to play with the three other people I bought the game with. I will not hold this against the score, however, as I am reviewing the game, not Gamespy, and it only was an issue for the first 5 days or so, a relatively short time in the game’s life. All in all the co-op I have played has been extremely smooth, and the loot is not hard to divide up. The enemies and loot scale well with the number of players providing a more challenging and more rewarding experience.

Graphics

This looks even better in game. Wow.

As Ryan said in his first impression review, the trailers and screenshots really don’t do the game justice. Heavily cell-shaded, Borderlands is really quite stunning, and watching a midget’s head explode and spray blood over his companions is only enhanced by it’s uncommon-for-shooters graphic style. A few shadows can become heavily pixelated, and some NPCs seem to have less time spent on them than others, but overall the graphics serve only to help Borderlands

Story – 6.5

Gameplay – 9

Multiplayer – 9.5

Graphics – 9.5

Final Score – 8.5

Brutal Legend-Impressions

I recently bought Brutal Legend, and I am pleasantly surprised at its charm and wit as you lead roadie Eddie Riggs on a journey through the metal-verse. The soundtrack is surprisingly good, with Judas Priest, Motley Crue, and Ozzy Osbourne leading the way.

The missions are fun, with a great variety between racing, combat, and countless other side missions keeping you busy. You have a car, called The Druid Plow. No, I’m not joking. I’m expecting it to become one of Tim Schafer’s many masterpieces, so check in later in the week for a review, complete with sexy pictures.

Even sexier than this one.

Julio Lawrence (Tim Schafer Fan)

Metal Gear Solid 3 – Review

Review: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Platform: Playstation 2

Developer: Kojima Productions

Publisher: Konami

Release: November 17, 2004 / March 14, 2006 (Subsistence)

“After the end of World War II, the world was split in two – east and west. This marked the beginning of the era known as the Cold War.” So begins Metal Gear Solid 3. If you’ve played any Metal Gear Solid title, you’re probably familiar with the character Solid Snake. The third entry in the series, Snake Eater, tells the story of Snake’s “father”: Naked Snake, of the CIA.

As the story begins, Naked Snake is dropped into the soviet jungle from a plane. His mission is to rescue a scientist named Sokolov, who is being coerced by a Russian Political Party into developing a dangerous nuclear tank. From here, the story of Metal Gear Solid 3 takes many twists and turns. There are many betrayals and double-crossers. Behind the primary story of war and espionage are themes of deep conflict between Snake and “The Boss”, who I like to think is a mother-figure to Snake. Some would call the tale convoluted, but you will understand it once you’ve played the game a few times. Which you will. Not just because it’s a short game, but an incredibly good one.

Snake is at war, yes, but not in the conventional way that one would expect of a video game. Snake has a goal to accomplish, and he will probably need to off some guys along the way, but he really, really wants to stay hidden (he’s only one man!). To this end, Snake can crawl on his belly, press up against walls, and use a brilliant combat system called Close Quarters Combat (CQC). Any player would do well to learn the ins-and-outs of CQC, because it makes the game extremely fun. CQC allows Snake to knock men out onto the ground, slit their throats silently, suffocate them until they’ve blacked out, and interrogate them. One particularly tricky maneuver allows Snake to take one man hostage with his knife while using his other arm to aim a gun at other enemies. Pulling off these techniques while staying hidden from “alerts” is extremely satisfying and rewarding.

CQC is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Some of the game’s other features include: 1) A camouflage system which allows Snake to change his clothes at any moment, blending in with certain scenery. 2) A hunting aspect. Snake must hunt wildlife or else he will run out of stamina. This gives the game some realism, and finding out which foods are the best can be fun and funny. 3) The survival viewer. When in combat, Snake can sustain a variety of injuries such as bullet wounds, deep cuts, broken bones, and poisoning. The survival viewer allows you to give Snake first aid, stopping the injuries from sapping his stamina.

All three are great ideas, but probably could have been implemented better. To access the camouflage menu, food menu, and survival viewer, you must first pause the game and enter whichever menu you need. This makes for some cumbersome breaks in gameplay, especially since you’ll be wanting to change your camouflage quite often. This is one of my only gripes with this game, but if we’re talking about one gripe, might as well get the other out of the way.

As you can tell, Metal Gear Solid 3 is designed completely with stealth in mind, and this is great. That is, if you stay hidden. Once a guard sees you, you’re somewhat fucked. If you don’t silence him quickly, and I mean quickly, he will whip out his radio and inform HQ of your presence, shout to his buddies nearby, and open fire. Now, it seems, is time for the game to become a shooter. But it doesn’t make this transition successfully. Equipping a gun yields no reticle, and the game retains its overhead perspective. Point Snake in the direction of enemies, hold down square, hope you hit them. Actually, pressing the triangle button with allow you to see through Snake’s eyes, but while in this view, you cannot walk/run. You’re stuck in one place. I honestly don’t understand these design decisions, and they hold the game back from being perfect.

Graphically, Metal Gear Solid 3 is a good-looking PS2 title. There are some good facial animations here and realistic character models with polished animations. Snake has many facepaints and camouflages which look very nice when applied to him. When there are many explosions, however, the framerate seems to slow to a crawl. It’s like the game is going in super slow mo. This doesn’t happen often though, as there aren’t often many explosions. Overall, Metal Gear Solid 3 is graphically good.

As far as sound goes, Metal Gear Solid 3 is pretty excellent. Its theme song, “Snake Eater”, is undeniably epic, and voice work is airtight, as you would expect from a Metal Gear Solid game. As far as sound effects go, you’ve got gunfire and all the fighting sounds you’d expect. There are also rubber frogs, “Kerotan”, hidden throughout the game. They make an inimitable squeaky sound when shot, which is hilarious.

And Metal Gear Solid 3 is jam-packed with secrets and extras. Really, it is. This game is bursting at the seams with secret camouflage costumes, facepaints, guns, conversations between characters (there are lots of these) and even some odd mini-games. These secrets will make you want to play the game again and again, collecting all of them. And if you have the Subsistence version of the game, you also receive a second disc that contains the first two Metal Gear titles for the MSX computer, as well as an entire online mode which I have been unable to play.

Overall, Metal Gear Solid 3 is a fantastic game. The following list consolidates all of what I’ve just told you into, well, a list.

PROS: CQC is awesome, great story, great graphics, epic theme song, jam-packed with great secrets and extras

CONS: Menu system can be annoying, gunplay isn’t ideal at all, occasional frame-rate drops

Final Score: 9.5 / 10

Sam Fields (Spaniard)

Borderlands First Impressions

First of all let me start of and say that the TV commercials do not give this game justice. When I saw it for the first time it looked like a crappy game that had terrible graphics and would be one of those games that would be over advertised and would be a failure. Was I wrong, this game is fun and addicting to play. So I will break the awesomeness down just so that your brain won’t explode.

STORY:

The basic story of Borderlands is that your character is a treasure hunter looking for a legendary vault. And its contents would make who ever found it rich, famous, and have all things desirable. But its only a legend right? Wrong there has been tell that the vault is real, and you happen to be one of those individuals. But if you are looking for a deep story this is not the game for you. This game is intended for co-op between individuals.

GRAPHICS:

All of the graphics are a type of cartoon-ish concept art style which at first doesn’t seem that appealing or impressive but it really is. You can tell that each character was fully developed in their own unique way. Also the environment graphics follow the same style of art but still have the high quality aspects and features as you would see in a high graphics game.

GAMEPLAY:

The single player aspect of the game follows a similar game play of Fall Out in which you take quests from various sources, go out and complete those quests, turn in the quests and gain experience. And along the way various types of loot drops which can be picked up and used for your own benefit. Personally this system works great for the players and for advancing the story. It  will also work great for co-op multiplayer.

COMPLAINTS:

I am sad to say this but there are a few complaints. First of all the online multi-player has failed to work for me and my other friends playing on PC’s. Second, one of my friends has had several episodes where his game has crashed therefore losing the progress he has made.  We have yet to understand what the reason is .

Overall this game is awesome. It plays nicely and is very fun and addicting to play. If you plan to buy the game, buy a 4 pack on steam and split the cost between you and your friends therefore you save money and have other people to play with.

-Ryan (Tech guy)

Killing Floor – Review

This past weekend, Steam gave users free access to the Zombie Survival Shooter known as Killing Floor. I took this as an opportunity to write a quick review without actually having to pay for a game. What a deal. The obvious game to compare Killing Floor to is Valve’s hugely successful Left 4 Dead, which is fine to an extent, but there are key differences that keep the two apart.

Clearly nothing like a boomer

First, let me explain a basic game of Killing Floor. Six survivors enter a fairly small map with the intentions of wiping out all zombies, for obvious reasons. As you battle through the 7 waves, the zombies get stranger and stranger, like the Bloat, an oversized carcass that spits, and when killed, explodes bile. No similarities to the Boomer from Left 4 Dead, clearly. During the final wave, you fight the “Patriarch”, a zombie with machine guns, rocket launchers, insane melee damage, stealth, and healing. All of this tragic tale comes with no, and I mean NO story.  One cool feature, however, is the ability to visit a vendor between waves, who sells over 20 weapons, ranging from axes to flame throwers, and of course the expected ammo and combat armor.

One thing that separates Killing Floor from other zombie shooters is it’s use of classes. You can opt to be a medic, fulfilling the job of “pussy” (Just kidding, gotta love the healers), a Firebug (Flame-Thrower specialist: why not Pyromaniac?),  or a Beserker who chops the heads off of low-level zombies with an axe, then responds to the high-level zombies by promptly dying. There are also specialists for machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and explosives, but they are pretty boring. When it comes down to it though, the classes really make little to no difference, providing, for example +5% shotgun damage. Wheeeeeee… In comparison to Team Fortress 2, or Battlefield Heroes (Which has been popping up a lot in recent columns) the class system falls flat.

While this situation may look really awesome, the player will most certainly die in 3... 2... 1...

My favorite part of the gameplay experience was the slow-motion kill camera, coming in at just the perfect time to give optimum detail to the rendering of a once-human head by a chainsaw. This can get a little annoying sometimes when a teammate elsewhere on the map gets a kill and your camera is slowed down for 5 seconds, but in the end it’s all worth it. But besides that, the game felt lackluster, it was very easy to die if you did not pick a narrow hallway to defend, and when you did, the game became just too easy.

All in all, Killing Floor is an ok game, but compared to the likes of Left 4 Dead, it has almost no appeal. Maybe you’ll pick it up for it’s low price tag of $19.99, but in the end you’ll still just be playing a hollow shell of the game it tries to imitate.

Gameplay – 6

Story – 0

Graphics – 6

Final Score – 4.5

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days: Review

Oh, Square Enix I do love you so. 358/2 Days is a game designed and made for Kingdom Hearts fans only. You won’t get the story or appreciate the game if you never played a Kingdom Hearts game before. Because of this I will be rating this game from the perspective of the intended audience (which would be me).

Story: The storyline is very interesting for the most part. Playing through the events you have already experienced in previous games form Roxas’s perspective is actually really engaging. The lack of animated cut scenes and voice acting is made up for with wonderfully written dialogue. Aside from a few boring unnecessary scenes of Roxas eating ice cream the story is fantastic.

Menu Design: The menu designs are easy to navigate and learn. You use a panel system similar to the one in Chain of Memories. It is slightly annoying that you have to level up with “level up panels” but its fun to be able to edit how you fight. The shop is more synthesis-based which gives the game more replay value. The items in the shop are almost all worth obtaining. Unlocking and upgrading are one of the best aspects of this game.

Gameplay: The gameplay is just a slightly simplified version of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. Scrolling through magic and items in real time gets frustrating but shortcuts ease the pain a little bit. The lock-on and camera system is the most annoying aspect of the game. You have to tap R every single time you want to change the camera angle and there is no auto camera. A new interesting mechanic in this game is Limit Breaks. It’s essentially like a Final Smash in Brawl but it’s less cheap because you can only use it if your HP is low.

Extras: Mission Mode is the only extra you get in this game but man, what an extra! You get to play as every organization member and Donald and Goofy. Each character has their own Limit Break and attack system.

Final Verdict: 9/10 Great for Kingdom Hearts fans but if you aren’t then 358/2 days is not the game for you.

Scribblenauts Second Opinion

Well here at 8-Bit Prodigy we’ve decided to start second opinion reviews. In these, we will respond to another author’s review and say why we thought the game deserved a higher or lower score. They will be shorter, as we will state what we think the previous review forgot to evaluate as apposed to reviewing the whole game.

When I read Hayden’s review of Scribblenauts (http://eightbitprodigy.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/scribblenauts-review/) I felt that, while it evaluated the game well from a casual gamer’s point of view, it could be elaborated on fairly easily to make it relevant to more hardcore gamers as well. My two main issues with the game are 1) The buggy controls (covered by Hayden) and 2) Lack of useful items. As Hayden said, their are over 25,000 possible objects to create, but here’s a list of the ones you’ll need: Lasso, Wings, Ooze, Moon Buggy, Rope, and Wall. The main reason for this is the lack of level variety. Although they appear very different, a great amount of the levels consist of either protecting an object (Wall), retrieving an item (Wings, Lasso), transporting an item (Moon Buggy, Rope) or killing a bad guy (Ooze). Then there’s the levels where nothing logical seems to work, for example there was one where I had to trade items with aliens for various space rocks, and I tried everything, cow, spaceship, UFO, water, basically everything I could think of an alien wanting. In the end, I just grabbed the rocks, ran, and gave it to the spaceman. How rewarding.

Second Opinion Score: 7

-David McIntyre (Site Designer)

Halo 3: ODST Review

There is a very precarious balance between three basic design elements in video games: art, story, and gameplay. Halo 3: ODST is a beautiful, well-made game in the art category, but definitely is a little lacking in the other two. Let’s go over some background, shall we?

Halo 3: ODST is the fourth and most recent installment of the wildly popular Halo series, which you most likely have heard of. If you haven’t: Halo is a series of science fiction first person shooter video games, in which you fight for humanity against a bunch of pissed off aliens. There is a much larger story arc involved, but I’m not going to go into that because it is in no way vital to this review.

In ODST, you play as Rookie, a UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. ODSTs drop from the upper atmosphere of the Earth to the surface in a small, one-man pod.

That's the one!

Once you reach Earth, your mission is to go around and search for your scattered crew members. This can be done by walking to a specific part of the map and finding some sort of remnant (a sniper rifle, a helmet, etc.) of your crew. Once you find one, you are whisked into a flashback, where you assume the role of another member of the crew.

It is important to note that in this game, you do not play as some sort of super-soldier from the SPARTAN project–Rookie and his teammates are regular humans, and have the same limitations of a regular human (albeit a very strong and badass human). Due to these limitations, you do not possess the energy shield of Master Chief. Instead, you have a stamina mechanic and a health bar. Which means that if you lose any of your health, you’re not getting it back unless you find a health pack. And health packs are hard to come by. Is it nice to get something different? Sure. Is it also pretty annoying? Certainly. There are going to be some times in the game where you think, I’m going to die and there’s really nothing that I can do about it. And then you will probably die. Also, somehow ODSTs do not have the skill to dual wield a weapon. Again, kind of annoying, but it certainly isn’t a major hinderance of the gameplay. But it’s not really here or there. It’s just different.

Just about everything about ODST is different from the other games in the Halo series. Especially the art styling. The best word I can think of to describe ODST is moody. The city setting of New Mombasa is very dark and quiet and very film noir-esque. The scene is only improved when the player flips on the character’s VISR, a visual display that outlines every object, building, and living being in a distinct color (Red for enemies, green for allies, blue for objects, and yellow for the background), gives night vision, and shows a compass.

The visuals on the game are perfect for the general mood and feel of the game, and the audio is some of the best I’ve heard in any video game. The background music is a soft, smooth, and ambient jazz. The many sounds in the abandoned city turn it into an electronic ghost town–almost spooky and definitely immersive. In some cases, the player can find small audio recordings from various terminals throughout the city. Really, some of the best parts of this game are parts where you’re not doing anything except walking around and exploring the city.

The story is up to par with an average game. I wouldn’t describe it as the most fulfilling part of the game. It’s a good story, and it was well done, but there was nothing about it that was especially notable. You will like it, and it will be cool, but you probably won’t particularly care about it. I think it would’ve been really good had the game been longer.

ODST plays a lot like most Halo games as far as the actual battles. Which goes to say that it is really fun. You kill some aliens, and they shoot at you. You’ve got all of your favorite weapons around, and all of your favorite grenades, too. The main difference here though is that you don’t necessarily have to kill all of the adversaries nearby. You can just skip right past them if you want to. The game is completely nonlinear, and you can do any of the missions in any order you want, so there are a lot of random clusters of aliens that you can sneak past without killing. But of course, why would you want to?

It is also important to make note of the non-campaign playing modes. ODST features a new playing mode called “Firefight,” where you hold out a single location against endless hordes of aliens. It is similar to the Survival and Horde modes from Left 4 Dead and Gears of War 2 respectively. Firefight is fun, challenging, and lets you play with your friends instead of against them(for you gamers whose friends are all way better than you). Of the whole game, Firefight probably has the most replay value, and is undoubtedly the best for playing with friends, since there is no separate multiplayer mode in ODST. The game ships with the regular Halo 3 multiplayer on a separate disc.

Final Score: 8

Final Thoughts: ODST is a game that is worth playing for the rich art and new play mode, but because of the short campaign it is not worth shelling out 60 dollars for. I would recommend either borrowing it, or waiting until the price drops. However, If you don’t already have the Halo 3 multiplayer, Halo 3: ODST is a great option.

Chibi-Robo! – Review

Review: Chibi-Robo!

Platform: Nintendo Gamecube

Developer: skip Ltd.

Publisher: Nintendo

Release: February 2006

As Patrick remarked in his last column, “Death-less games are difficult to come by nowadays.” He cited Jet Set Radio as an example of a unique, non-violent game. Chibi-Robo! Is another one of those games. Now, I won’t keep you in the dark: Chibi-Robo! Does have some enemies. But it’s basically irrelevant given the scarcity of combat encounters. The real goal in Chibi-Robo! Is the opposite of killing: you must make people happy!

The Sanderson family is in trouble financially. But that’s not all: Dad spends all his time, watching television and playing with toys, Mom doesn’t have a job, Tao (who is a dog) is always tracking mud into the house, and Jennie thinks she’s a frog! On Jennie’s birthday, she receives Citrusoft’s Chibi-Robo from her father. It is a (pricey) little robot helper designed simply to make the Sandersons’ lives as cushy and charmed as possible. You are Chibi-Robo. Although making people happy is your only goal out the outset of the game, you take on many other challenges along the way. The story of Chibi-Robo! is quite grand despite being tethered to the setting of a single suburban house. This is because Chibi-Robo also interacts with the nocturnal toy-denizens of the Sanderson household, keeping them happy and learning more about the Sandersons’ past along the way. I don’t want to elaborate too much on the story of the game, but I will tell you this: Just when you think things can’t get any zanier or crazier, they will. The story is definitely whacky enough to keep you playing, and there are some genuinely funny moments as well. It even deals with mature themes like divorce! Overall, Chibi-Robo’s story is head and shoulders above most games.

Chibi-Robo’s adventures are confined to the 5-or-so room house of the Sandersons. This may seem quite limited, but Chibi-Robo is very small, and the house, by comparison, is a very large area to explore. Chibi-Robo will pick up trash, use a toothbrush to clean up mud and stains, dig holes with a spoon, and gain many powerups like the Chibi-Blaster and Chibi-Copter. All activities, including walking, climbing, and everything, use up Chibi-Robo’s battery. You’ll often find yourself looking for the nearest wall socket towards the beginning of the game, but as time goes on and you increase your “Chibi-Ranking” (essentially a measure of how great your Chibi-Robo is compared to all the other ones), you will earn bonus battery-life and eventually outgrow your need for the sockets. Overall, control is tight, although Chibi-Robo may move a bit slow for some. Combat is a matter of pointing the Chibi-Blaster in the general direction of an enemy and pressing A. I would say that they should have done a better job of it, but combat is a rare occurrence in Chibi-Robo, and there is only about a 10-minute portion towards the end of the game that is combat-heavy.

The game is based on a day-and-night system. Every time day becomes night or vice-versa, Chibi-Robo automatically returns to the Chibi House downstairs in the living room for a recharge and pep talk from his sidekick Telly. This can be a bit tedious as the days and nights are rather short, but I always started a new day or night with certain goals in mind, which made me keep playing. Aside from the game’s main goals of earning happy points, increasing your Chibi-Ranking to #1, and becoming Super Chibi-Robo, there are many sidequests and other goals that make themselves apparent as the game goes on. You will never find yourself spending a day scrubbing the floors or picking up trash just because you have nothing else to do and want some happy points. You will always have some important task to attend to. It will take 10-12 hours to finish Chibi-Robo!, and maybe a couple more to finish all the sidequests and collect all the “stickers”. I do have a couple complaints about the gameplay, however. The first is that once you have finished the game and quests, there aren’t any other modes to try. No multiplayer, no nothin. You’re done unless you want to start again or just tool around the house. My second complaint is that sometimes the game won’t give you a clue as to what you should do next, forcing you to resort to talking to all the characters or just trying weird shit.

Graphically, Chibi-Robo! Is very colorful and has a refined, cartoonish art style. However, many objects and character models are quite polygonal and unpolished. Chibi-Robo himself is well animated in everything he does, but other characters aren’t as much. Sometimes, rather than show a character walking off, the game will instead employ cheesey screen-wipe effects to show that they have vanished. The art style is solid, but Chibi-Robo! Isn’t really a technical marvel.

Sound is a different story. Chibi-Robo! Has some very, very creative sound effects. Chibi-Robo’s footsteps are accompanied by musical notes, and the instrument changes based on what surface he is walking on. When he uses the toothbrush, a catchy guitar loop plays. When he climbs rope or poles, precarious-sounding scales accompany him. It’s a joy to listen to all these things while playing. The music of the game can be a bit dull while just walking around the house, but certain cutscenes and characters come with some very entertaining and exciting tunes.

Overall, Chibi-Robo! Is a very unique game. It involves very little combat, actually makes the player do house work, and still remains quite fun. At times its story deals with heavy subject matter like divorce, and at other times is light-hearted and genuinely funny. Each character is unique and has their own personality. Art style and great sound add to the game’s atmosphere. My only complaints are that the graphics aren’t quite up to scratch, and that at times it can be hard to know what to do next.

Pros:

-Great story

-interesting characters

-great sound direction

-varied gameplay

Cons:

-Graphics aren’t great

-you may find yourself wondering what to do next

-rather short

-no extra modes

- Sam (some young guy)

8-Bit Prodigy Video Game Review Scale

“What do these numbers mean???”

Like many publications, our scale runs from 1 – 10. We grade games in increments of ½. The closer a rating is to 10, the better the game is. Here, I’ll show you what I mean:

0: This game has nothing to offer. It fails miserably in all aspects of its being. It is not even bad in a funny way. I can’t even think of a game that deserves 0. That’s how bad it is.

1: This game probably shouldn’t be played by anybody. It fails to accomplish much of anything, and is overall a very unrewarding and crappy experience.

2: This game is pretty damn bad. It doesn’t accomplish what it set out to. Far from it, in fact. But perhaps there is some, small aspect of the game that kind of doesn’t suck.

3: This game is terrible, but perhaps its one saving grace is that it is fun to hate. Perhaps you can sit with a group of friends and play it, poking fun at all its failures.

4: This game is bad, but maybe, under all the crap on the surface, you can spot a good idea or two.

5: This game is rather average. It isn’t very unique. It doesn’t have any ideas of its own. It isn’t particularly fun to play. But it isn’t a complete failure.

6: This game is slightly above average. Perhaps the developers had some good ideas, but executed them rather poorly.

7: This game is decent. It has some good ideas, and is an okay game to boot. You may want to play this if the game’s subject-matter is particularly interesting to you.

8: This game is good. It takes ideas that are good in theory and executes them well. This game is worth your time because it accomplishes something.

9: This game is great. It really brings something new to the table and is a fun experience throughout. A game that scores a 9 is a game of the year. It should be enjoyed by all gamers.

10: This game is a masterpiece. It innovates and brings something new to the table, or it refines everything we love about games into an amazing experience that you will keep playing even after you’re done. These games are few and very, very far between. It should be enjoyed by all people of every kind.

- Sam (Writer or something)