32_Footsteps's Full Review: Custom Robo for GameCube
There are plenty of things in bad video games that drive me nuts. My most frequent headache is lousy controls. Another is a poor power-up system. Horrendous graphics and sound also have their place. But personally, nothing is as maddening or as grating as to see a great concept for a game butchered beyond belief. Some of the games I've hated the most, like Earthworm Jim 3D, have done this to me. Stepping into this rarefied air of games that genuinely cheese me off is Custom Robo.
First, let me set this up by hearkening back to my Gotcha Force review by saying that I loved playing Toy War (pitting your various toys in a free-form free-for-all) for as long as I played with toys (which, as of last check, is still going on). The idea of playing a video game version of this entices me to no end. The setup of Custom Robo, in which you play in a world where 4 inch tall robots are used for battling, is like an apple in Tarterus to me. And just like poor Tantalus, I find that the gameplay I seek is being pulled forever out of my reach.
First, the story of the game, where the trouble begins. You guide your personally named hero on a quest to become a Commander, someone who controls a Robo, because you promised your dad years ago. You sign up for a two-bit mercenary outfit called the Steel Hearts, and manage to stumble into a simmering pool of intrigue and world-threatening danger. Because this is a video game, and the world is always in peril and you, with your unlikely skills, are the only way to stop it.
I could barely accept this in Gotcha Force, which used the combined excuse that the toys in question were from outer space (and thus had actual weaponry to use), because not everyone used their toys for everything, and because the commanders in that game didn't have their total focus on controlling the battle. But in Custom Robo, the robots are always in cubes unless they're in a holographic battle arena (so for all intents and purposes, they aren't real). Commanders have to mentally link up in order to battle. And finally, people use Robos for every kind of dispute. It's one thing if, say, friends used them to settle disputes. But when you see criminals attempting to pull a heist using their holographic robots (which, in fact, is how the game starts off), instead of something sensible like strong-arming their victims, then you know that the scenario just doesn't hold water.
I know, I'm probably thinking too much about a game. But seriously, there's a certain plausibility test I think every game should put up with. And it's pretty simple: could I, with only the tools and knowledge available in the modern day, come up with a better way to do what the characters in the game are doing? Well, more often than not, I could do better than what they're trying to do in game. So this game fails my (quite liberal) plausibility test.
What gets even worse, though, is when the characters figure out that their world consists of more than their four-walled area, which basically covers the area of a small city. You're going to try to tell me that even with an amnesia device (sorry, I'm ruining the flimsy excuse for a plot for everyone), that everyone actually believes that the world encompasses an area roughly the size of one metropolis? I've heard of navel staring, but to think an entire city of people doing that, without getting curious at all about the outside world, is just too stupid to be believed.
I suppose I am overanalyzing the plot of a simple action game. And really, this game is quite simple. You control your Robo in a small arena, viewed from an overhead camera capable of rotating, and you have to knock off all your opponent's life as quickly as possible. You each start with 1,000 energy, and you get your choice of a gun, a bomb, missile pods, or a body tackle to take out your opponent. In and of itself, pretty simple.
Moreover, the controls are pretty simple. You get just a button for each maneuver, and beyond reload and recovery times (which vary between attacks, and the game even warns you which ones take longer), the game responds close to exactly when you want it. There can be some load issues for larger battles (particularly in multiplayer), but overall the controls are pretty responsive and basic.
The complexity of the game arises in that you get to pick out five different parts to your robo to use. Not only do you get to choose which of the three weapons you use, but you also choose your chassis and what kind of leg modifications you get to put on. Given the various permutations of each piece of equipment (over 50 guns, over 30 bombs, and so on), it sounds like you've got millions of potential combinations, correct?
This is where the game starts to trick you. For the most part, many models of each kind of part are almost the same as another within that part family. Each basic type of Robo chassis has three different versions (basically, balanced, fast, and armored), but most often these don't vary much. Quite a few guns are just slight variations of the same theme (like the three different Gatling gun imitators), and bombs and missile pods are even more likely to be duplicates (in many cases, the only difference is which direction your opponent is thrown by a given weapon). Thus, many of the possible combinations really feel redundant.
One problem that periodically comes up is the "uneven start" issue. When a battle starts, you launch a cube out of a cannon, which lands on a number between one and six. When it counts down to zero (you can hit buttons to accelerate this), the Robo comes out. But if one comes out earlier than the other, the early bird gets in some free shots on the latecomer. Because everyone loves a game in which you are effectively randomly docked or rewarded a huge advantage in combat. While the AI, early on, won't take advantage of this much, late in the second quest you'll find situations where you can actually lose up to half of your life before you even have a chance to act. Call me crazy, but I could really do without a game this unbalanced.
A bigger problem is that the battles are way too short to be realistically considered. Once you build up a decent supply of weapons, and find the four or five in each type really worth having, you'll easily be able to clear battles within a minute. Two if you're doing a doubles battle. Given how often you have to wait in order to get into an actual battle, the relative small amount of action is a serious detriment to the game. It’s like the MTV effect hitting video gaming, and it’s just too sad for words.
What compounds this, though, is that the game has a low-level "Xenosaga effect" going on. Experienced gamers should already shudder, as they remember just watching the screen as the story drones on, just waiting for a chance to actually play and do something in the game. Now, I like plot as much as someone can like the plot in a game. But at the same time, you need to pace the plot so that the game's action (such as it is, in a game like this) occurs at regular intervals and you don't have long, droning sections that end up boring everyone to sleep before the plot is fully actualized. Nothing is quite as frustrating as to see a plot discussion so long, you're prompted to save four different times during it, so you won't have to relisten to it.
Meanwhile, the graphics in this game also wear on you, but unfortunately you don't ever get to skip those. In the part of the game in which you wander around, RPG-style, trying to find the next morsel of plot and/or a battle, you'll see graphics that are quite reminiscent of early 128-bit titles. The polygons are rounded, but everything looks artificial and plastic-like. It's one thing for the background to look that way (as, according to the story, everything really is made out of plastic in the scenery), but this goes for all the people too. I really think people's faces shouldn't look like a painted-on feature on an otherwise flat cylinder or sphere.
In battle, the graphics are a bit too jarring, to be honest. The Robos are made of a melange of polygons arranged in a vaguely humanoid shape (some more vague than others), and each one is a different color. Or should you take advantage of the color change option, variants of the same color. Fortunately, there's always a floating status bar above each character's head, so it isn't difficult to keep straight which is which. But in most instances, particularly when the camera pans out, all you'll see is a multicolor mishmash where your Robo is. The backgrounds are well-rendered, but it seems that all the game's graphical work went into them.
The music is fairly boring and dull, to be honest, which means that it's the best part of the package. The ambient music in much of the game is semi-futuristic instrumentals, and it really doesn't stick with you either way. More often than not, you won't even notice it. In battle, though, there is the faux hair metal that pumps out at you and does its best to sound "edgy," I suppose. For the most part, though, it feels like listening to a Poison fast song, and I really doubt that's much of a selling point.
Probably worth discussing, though, is that the sound effects in this game are built to annoy. I'm fairly tolerant of video game sound effects at this point, but even I know what can get grating fast. Quite a few of the guns, like the Rayfall and the Eagle, produce ear-splitting sounds that will make people nearby hit you until you stop playing or mute the sound. Others, like the Hornet, produce a low droning sound that makes you feel the urge to kill. But at least you can choose to not use those weapons. Worst of all is the goofy sound effect that accompanies people talking outside of battle. It's reminiscent of the way the adults speak in Peanuts cartoons. This was humorous when the rare adult character in Charles Schultz's world did this. But when every single person, including yourself, does the same thing, it's annoying in the extreme.
Perhaps I'd be less strict on this game if it didn't come out months after Capcom's Gotcha Force. But here's the thing: despite not being able to customize individual toys in that game, the myriad teams you can build ultimately lead to more customizable battle options. It also doesn't help Custom Robo's case that Gotcha Force has cleaner graphics, more action, and overall more entertainment. Even the collection aspect is better in Gotcha force. Custom Robo has about 200 parts, many of which are just duplicates of each other. Each of the 200 robots in Gotcha Force have 5 different palettes, each of which does have slightly different stats and abilities.
It's sad that Custom Robo, just because Nintendo published it, will sell much better than Gotcha Force. But really, with its boring and unbalanced gameplay, its mediocre graphics, and its inability to grant a truly wide range of customization, Custom Robo looks and feels like a project that got delayed way too long in development. Nintendo wanted to come up with its own answer to the Toy War I love playing so much. And all they ended up with was their answer to Daikatana.
Jump into mechanized melee in the single-player role-playing game, as you create Custom Robos to lead into battle Choose from over 200 different parts...More at Amazon
Jump into mechanized melee in the single-player role-playing game, as you create Custom Robos to lead into battle Choose from over 200 different parts...More at Amazon Marketplace
Custom Robo, the wildly popular action game of mechanized melee from Japan, hits the U.S. in May 2004. Get ready to enter a world of hyper-tech weapon...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Up for sale is a copy of ORIGINAL ( black label ) CUSTOM ROBO for GAMECUBE. It is in BRAND NEW FACTORY SEALED condition. I accept PAYPAL ONLY!! ALL SA...More at eBay
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