Elebits (Hands-on) (Wii) Preview

Elebits was a real shocker for me (pardon the pun) as I casually came across this game on display. It's one of those games that are completely foreign, but as I'm usually seduced by quirky things (do not question me on this!), I found myself rather excited to pick up and play. This was a very strange experience: a title I'd never heard of in a style that I hadn't played. The demo games had been mysteriously switched round in a matter of seconds and upon seeing the odd cheeky sprites saunter across the screen, I got the initial impression that it'd be a catch and collect all the creatures game... Boy, was I wrong.

After its rather seamless loading time I was armed with a physics laser gun, that comes straight out of Ghostbusters, and was placed in a very Micro Machines-esque kitchen with simple block colours and details. The main premise is to suck electric juice (or for the more scientific readers out there, watts) out of various slumbering aliens round different parts of the room, complete with many weird and wonderful flashing lights. The graphics go hand in hand with the cute simple soundtrack, few quirky little notes in loop which simply have great sticking power in your head, especially when you find that you've been doing a little subconscious jig throughout play!

It isn't as simple as it sounds as there were quite a lot of factors to consider; the power of your gun depending on how much critter juice you've sucked so what you can pick up and what you can't follows a rather linear pattern. Everything is either opened or shamelessly hurled using this neat little laser, searching for the optimum number of zapable creatures to complete the demo.

Throughout the level are appliances with different activation methods allowing for quite a lot of replay value to work out how each works. The timing also contributes plenty to this, as you build up a routine of how to get the allotted points as your laser grows stronger. As you can tell so far, the Wii is perfectly suited for this type of game. Each action made by different movements from the Wiimote, from a little flick of the wrist to open doors to the flinging open of cupboards and drawers with a passing swipe, using the pointing features of the controller.

It's a nice opportunity to act as an attention seeking "rock star" with the stereotypical action of trashing hotel rooms, without the fluorescent lights, lasers with the ability to flip over cars with aliens whizzing past your face. How primitive, eh?

There are some interesting features, like turning the tap in the basin to find little creatures pouring out of its spout, to the washing machine - popping out with bugs replacing plates (which are often the case with my house!). Once you've gotten enough power, different areas can be unlocked, but they require a certain amount of collected Watts to pass through. Like a garden in which quite a high amount of juice is needed to turn the handle and enter the outside where you can chuck gnomes around, searching for the little Elebits that lie within.

A game of hide and seek on a large scale with aliens and lasers, what's there not to like?

However, don't let this extra terrestrial theme put you off when it comes to gameplay, as it includes the menial jobs of cooking a turkey and toasting bread, only the joys of using laser powers to do so! This also makes you aware of how crazy you are in the opening seconds when the appliances aren't activated; I harmlessly hurled the toaster into the corner and the multiple attempts of shoving bread into a flipped toaster seemed quite amusing!

The only thing I had minor qualms with was the controls, but that's to be expected with such a new innovative controller like the big sensitivity issue; how much is too much? A little tap can send your crosshair careering over and over in loopy circles to my disappointment, as I'm quite a...energetic player normally (which explains why I hit the ball out quite often in Wii sports tennis, swiping at the screen), so I had to curb my enthusiasm somewhat. This made the cooking tasks quite hard as the little extra nudge could send your food crashing across the floor, never to be seen again; hopefully it will come with practice...

So overall I was very pleasantly surprised with this game, especially with the many combinations to try out once I'd found different sources of power, a very good reason to pick it up and play randomly. I found myself playing this more than Twilight Princess for some reason!