Chibi-Robo [GC]

Exploring the Sanderson home using all these tools and abilities is lots of fun. The Sanderson home is full of objects that serve as big obstacles for a tiny ten centimeter robot. Just getting to the top of the couch in order to interact with Papa, who spends most of the day there, requires that you jump over books that have been conveniently stacked to form a stairway for you, pull yourself up onto a chair, pull yourself onto the chair's handles, activate your helicopter to glide to a small table between the chair and the couch, then use your helicopter once more to make the final leap to the couch itself.

The game is full of little challenges like this. To get to the kitchen counter, you'll need to climb up narrow indentations in furniture. To get up to a tabletop, you'll need to pull yourself up a power cord that's hanging from a lamp. As the player, you usually just push right, left, down or up and the game takes care of most of the hard work, but don't be surprised if you slip up a few times and fall.

You're not free to move around without reserve. Everything Chibi does requires power. Keep Chibi standing still, and his power meter slowly drains. Make him run, and the meter drains faster. Climb up a power cord or use your helicopter, and the power meter drains rapidly. Power also serves as a life meter for Chibi -- fall or get shot, and you'll incur a big power hit.

When you find yourself on the verge of a dead battery, you'll want to charge yourself at the nearest power outlet. Chibi drags a power cord wherever he goes (or carries it -- you can actually move faster by picking up the cord and holding it over your head). Charging your battery back to full is instantaneous, and you can also take the opportunity to save your game. As you work through the game, you'll take delivery of extended batteries and also earn enough money to by backup power supplies.

Eventually... well, we're not sure what will happen, but it's sure to be off center. Like Skip's first GameCube game, Giftpia, Chibi Robo gets bonus points for being bizarre. Characters and toys speak Nintendo-speak (actually, it seems to be the same senseless language that was used in Giftpia). The game is also full of imaginative event scenes, as Space Detective appears on the scene for the first time and the M&M toys fortify their positions. In game, you'll notice that Chibi's footsteps make strange sound effects depending on the type of surface on which you're walking. It may be musical notes, or crashing sounds -- there are no actual "footstep" sounds as far as we can tell.

The game has continued to present new challenges non-stop through our play time, be it in the form of a new room to explore or a new event scene introducing a new toy. Most recently, we managed to drop down the kitchen sink drain, and the game switched to a 2D side-scrolling maze of pipes with rats serving as foes. The garden outside seems like the perfect place to plant seeds and grow flowers. There's also all that fish food that we keep on gathering. It would help if we could find a fish tank.

While the penchant for bizarre is inherited from Giftpia, we'd say Chibi Robo is the more accessible game. Giftpia took a considerable amount of time explaining to you the rules of the game, and even after all that, it wasn't quite clear what you should be doing. Chibi Robo is something that you can jump right into and start playing to your heart's content, without interruption, just a few minutes after the introduction.

Where all this accessible bizarreness will lead is anyone's guess. There's some talk about Chibi Robo becoming Super Chibi Robo once he attains top rank. We also seem to be working the little girl away from the belief that she is a frog (although, strangely, we're giving her frog-themed items in order to get to this goal). The Sanderson family actually has some clear problems, with frog girl, the jobless dad who sits on the couch all day and plays with his Space Detective action figure then sleeps there at night, and Mama Sanderson who's so lonely that she needs you to speak with her so that she can complain about Papa (agreeing to Mama's request earns you lots of happy points, and a trip to the top of the kitchen table). Maybe Chibi Robo is the key bringing happiness to the Sandersons.

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