It's a funny thing about console launch titles. Most of the games that are released to coincide with the release of the console fall into one of several categories: The first-party system sellers, the blatant ports from other systems, and the uninspired games that are rushed out to capitalize on the lack of selection. Every once in a while, though, there's a sleeper to be found even in that initial batch of games. I'm not sure if Elebits is that game or not, but it's certainly one of the more interesting uses of the Wii control system to grace the system's launch.
The premise of Elebits is that the titular entities are tiny critters that provide all the electricity that is required for the life of modern conveniences that we all enjoy. One day, there's a huge blackout: apparently, the Elebits are tired of serving their benevolent masters, and they collectively decide that they're not going to take it anymore. No, they ain't gonna take it. So they all decide that they're going to abandon their posts and hide throughout the houses that they used to power. Kai, whose parents both study the Elebits bolt for the office at the first sign of the trouble, and he is left alone in the house with the wayward creatures with only his father's capture gun to collect enough of the creatures to restore power to his house, and eventually the rest of the town.
Elebits plays like a cross between Katamari Damacy and a first person shooter. Each mission provides you a goal number of watts to generate, which is done by capturing the Elebits with your capture gun that are hiding throughout the environment. Some of the Elebits are in plain sight, but most are hiding behind or inside objects that must be picked up, shaken out or broken with the capture gun. The result is very much like the old Nickelodeon game Finders Keepers, where you essentially trash a series of rooms in search of Elebits.
The catch is that the gun can only lift so much. To upgrade your gun to lift more weight, you must turn on appliances that are activated once you surpass certain wattage thresholds. So you have to capture enough Elebits to turn on the appliances to move bigger objects to capture enough Elebits… Well, you get the idea. It's an idea that worked well in Katamari Damacy, and it works well here.
The game is pretty simple, and each progressive level, with the exception of the occasional boss battle, is pretty much more of the same with a different environment, time limit, and wattage goal. Some of the stages throw in an extra restriction, like not breaking too many objects or not making too much noise (which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense; the kid is alone in the house after his parents ran off, so who's going to complain? The Elebits?), but these really don't make a huge difference to your tactics.
Despite the game's simplicity, there's something strangely addictive to the gameplay that keeps you coming back. It's satisfying to trash the house in search of these creatures, and once you've finished a level, you want to see where the game's going to send you next, and what clever places the Elebits have found in which to hide.
The problem here is that the levels repeat relatively often. You'll end up doing two or three missions in the same room, which gets repetitive. A lot of the fun of the game, much as with Katamari Damacy, is in exploring new environments and seeing what you can fling around and turn on, and it's a real let down when you end up having to run through the dad's study for the third time, even given different goals or circumstances.
The control is very similar to that of a first person shooter: The Nunchuk moves you around the environment, with the C and Z buttons used to crouch or get up on your tip-toes, while the Wiimote both aims and looks around. And, of course, you're looking for Elebits to capture with your capture gun, which is fired by either A or B. The control scheme is fairly natural, and it should be easy for just about anyone to pick up.
The actual control is somewhat hit or miss, however. As far as being able to move objects throughout the environment, everything works well most of the time; as long as you're not particularly concerned with an object's final destination (and most of the time, you're not), it's really easy to get stuff out of your way and flush out those pesky Elebits. There are some decent physics effects at play as well, and the items fly about the rooms fairly realistically.
However, the control can be extremely frustrating when it comes to finer movements; some appliances require objects to be placed inside them (for instance, a CD shredder requires a CD to be inserted), and it can be extremely difficult to do so. A lot of this problem revolves around the fact that the game relies on pulling and pushing the Wiimote to move objects closer to and farther away from you, and the Wii doesn't do a particularly good job of tracking the Wiimote that way. Some of it, though, is just sloppy, like the doors that start closing on you right after they're opened, making you back up and open the door a second time.
It also would be nice if the game made the appliances easier to find and operate. I've found that I spent a lot of time either looking for appliances that the game has told me that I've activated but can't find, or looking for the switches for said appliances once I've found them. The game does indicate that there is a switch to be turned on with a box and an arrow, but said arrow rarely points to the switch, and it doesn't seem like it would be particularly difficult to make that happen. Later on, you encounter switches that are behind a door in items like phone booths, for instance; the problem is, when your capture gun gets stronger, you'll end up flinging the object rather than opening its door. Worse, some appliances just say “Action” with little to no direction as to what that action might be.
The graphics aren't going to wow anyone, either. The game looks like a late N64 game or a first generation GameCube game; even despite the fact that the Wii's not particularly more powerful than the GameCube, it still doesn't look like what the system is capable of producing. The graphics are very simple and almost cartoonish, but that also somewhat suits the gameplay to a degree. The poor graphics don't get in the way, per se; it's still easy to tell what's what, but you're not going to be showing Elebits off to showcase the graphics.
The sound is equally unimpressive. The music isn't bad, but it's not memorable and doesn't really do anything to add to or subtract from the experience. The voice acting, however, is easily some of the worst that I've heard in years. I've heard lines read better and with more emotion in elementary school plays. Fortunately, there are relatively few occasions where you need to suffer through the voice acting (and the story is so inconsequential that you won't miss anything if you skip past those sequences anyway), but it just takes you out of the game when those sequences do come up.
Overall, Elebits may not be the best game ever, but it's a fun diversion for a few hours. It's a cute game that's appropriate for both kids and kids at heart, and while it can be frustrating, it also has an addictively fun quality to it. It's not the best game in the world, and given that you'll probably either finish or get tired of it in under ten hours, it's probably best experienced as a rental, but Elebits is still a fun game and worth checking out, if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of the creative games that the Wii might be able to enable.
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