Elebits Game Review–Deranged Plot, Weirder Play
I have to hand it to the Wii, I really do, because this is the system that seems bound and determined to, at all costs, take CHANCES. They will do the strangest things for little or no more reason than THEY CAN. And the perfect evidence of that concept is found in a little game from Konami called Elebits, out now for the Nintendo Wii.
See, this game may have one of the most insane plots EVER. A vaguely earthlike society–I say this because there are some sheer impossibilities going on here–has advanced to about twentieth-century technology because they discovered electricity a long time ago. Nothing odd there, except their electricity doesn’t come from wind or solar or coal. This society gets its electricity thanks to a race of tiny little creatures called Elebits, which fell to the planet’s surface on a giant lightning bolt. The people of the planet promptly enslaved the Elebits by jamming them into their appliances and using their electrical power to run their blenders and heaters and computers and whatnot. Oh, sure, the game SAYS that the people and Elebits were FRIENDS, but I don’t buy a word of it. After all, who’s coming out ahead in that little arrangement? It sure isn’t the Elebits.
But anyway–you’ll be playing an eight year old kid of such spectacular shortsightedness that he wishes the Elebits didn’t exist, throwing the planet into a pitch black barbarism just so his Elebit-researcher parents would spend more time with him. It’s about the time he actually articulates that wish that the entire town goes dark. The Elebits are asleep on the job, and its up to you, armed with your dad’s capture gun, to tear the house apart in search of the Elebits so you can get them back to work and watch your favorite TV show.
See what I mean? This game couldn’t be more deranged if you were required to wear the Wiimote like a hat.
You’ll be blundering around your house, using your “capture gun“, which is basically a portable tractor beam that apparently doesn’t require Elebit power to work at the lowest levels, to lift things and shake things and throw things around so you can find those lazy little bastards and return them to their electrical enslavement.
This is actually fairly entertaining, at least for a while, until you start getting into narrow rooms and get hampered by a “breakage limit” in which you’re suddenly no longer allowed to smash things open in search of Elebits. I call that a cheat, myself–I was gleefully throwing potted plants around the room without consequence and now, all of a sudden, I break open that vase to look for Elebits and it’s game over? Screw that, says I, with all the emphasis it deserves.
But still, Elebits is absolutely a departure from literally everything that came before it. I can’t think of anything even vaguely resembling a parallel on this one and it shows. This is a fun game that does start getting in its own way after a while, but there’s still fun enough in this one to make it a solid rental, if nothing else.