Elebits

Written by Chris Reiter  on July 31, 2006

First Impressions: Man's greatest power becomes his teeniest and most irritating enemy.

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Lately, quirky games have been good for business. Many of us are drawn to the next big oddity now and again. Katamari Damacy, for one, was to thousands (if not millions) of PlayStation 2 owners the most bizarre, most desirable bundle of joy. The game didn't function with the best set of gameplay, graphics, music, or even much of a story to its name, but people loved it. Strange how that works. Taking their chance on the unusual marketplace, Konami has come to understand the Wii's controller and says to themselves that this is the perfect opportunity to offer something totally out of whack. For Elebits, weird has found its next game to call home.

Humans are God's most eminent creature. We've got to eat, sleep, work, and play. And we need a supporting life fuel for each and every luxury that we've built and use in our daily events. A car's got to run. A pencil sharpener's got to sharpen. And yes, even television must broadcast Beverly
Hills 90210. (What do you mean it's off the air? Noooo!) It just so happens that one day, the world's one and only expedient has decided to go on strike. Wind, fuel, sun, and all other known energy sources in the world of Elebits doesn't exist. But Elebits do. These tiny little rascals have
peacefully coexisted in the universe with people since the beginning, and now just decide to take a break from their one duty of empowering the niceties of life. It's time to hunt these little rat bastards down to enslave them for the sake of all humanity! Hey, it's either us or them.

Hide and seek is the game that everyone knows and plays following a simple set of rules. One person hides, the others seek him or her out. The gameplay premise behind Elebits is very similar. Here, many Elebits will hide; with your Wii-powered energy gun, you'll have to seek them out in a first-person point of view. Your zapper in the game is not just any gun. This gadget will actually latch onto environmental objects and toss them around like the zero gravity power Syndrome had in "The Incredibles." Exploring both indoor and outdoor environments (think within suburbia), you'll get time limits and power-ups to suck up these Elebits critters. Elebits may scatter all about in one given area, so adding to your aiming capabilities a stun beam will temporarily halt all movement within a limited range. By blasting more and more of the Elebits, new areas will unlock as the more you contain them the more they'll act as your guiding resource.

Like the majority of Wii games, Elebits is nothing to get ecstatic over if pretty visuals are what you are seeking to capture this fall. While Elebits has a bearing more (or less, depending on how you look at it) reminiscent of a GameCube game, the title will sport an overall decent collaboration. Indoors you'll see the likes of boxy drawers, cupboards, stoves, pans, and all. Outside you'll catch a glimpse of automobiles, fencing, grass, houses, and more. Add in some electronic laser blasting and midget little aqua-toned, Pikmin-like Elebits, and you get an art quality that doesn't spell much for graphics nuts, but it won't mean disaster for
everyone else either.