Custom Robo

"Like Pokemon meets Digimon meets Mobile Suit Gundam and twice the awesome"

It took them five years, but Nintendo finally decided to give North America a taste of the phenomenal Custom Robo series. Developed by Noise and released in 1999 on the N64, the first Custom Robo game immediately made waves in Japan, but for whatever reason, it along with the sequel Custom Robo V2 (2000) were not to touch North America. Finally, after Fire Emblem was received so well outside of Japan, Nintendo decided to test the waters some more with the Gamecube's rendition of Custom Robo in 2004. Can it hold up to the high standards of its predecessors, or does this Robo go down faster than a Peregrine?

GRAPHICS

You know, I'm not gonna' bother trying to sugar-coat it for you here. Absolute crap. If crap could, it'd be insulted by that remark. Though on the bright side, most of the Robo action is zoomed out a fair bit, so the apparent laziness of the programmers here is easily omittable. The human character models look like something out of the Dreamcast, if even that. Pity you'll be looking at them instead of the Robos for most of the story mode. Speaking of which…

GAMEPLAY

And this is what separates the boys from the men. Robos vary in speed, defense, airborne prowess, and melee attack power. Some, like the Aerial Beauty models, are adept at fighting in the air, while the slow Metal Grapplers can take a ton of punishment before finally falling down. They are equipped with your choice from Guns, Bombs, Pods, and Legs. The Gun is your primary weapon obviously, and they too differ in functions and effects. Some, like the Vertical Gun, are useful no matter what the situation, and others are useless no matter what, like the Splash Gun. Bombs launch, well, bombs at your opponent. Pods are back-mounted drones that explode when they come in contact with either your foe or yourself. And Legs upgrade your Robo's base stats, for example, the High Jump Legs increase jump height, while the Formula Legs increase your speed. Furthermore, some weapons function differently when fired in the air. Finding the right mix of Robos and parts either depends on going after your opponent's weaknesses, compensating for your own, or just trying to survive a hazard-filled battlefield with another Robo trying to destroy you. Sound complex yet? Oh, that's just the half of it. The most fun comes from the battlefields (Holosseums): some are plain and feature simple walls and destructible objects; others feature hazards like lava pits and conveyor belts, and the rest consist of splitting ground, spinner panels, swinging platforms, moving walls, and other goodies of the like. Battles can be either pathetically easy, won just by mashing B, or, particularly in the last half of the story mode, boil down to the right parts, strategy, and sheer luck. And to add to the already complex enough gameplay, there are different match types like 2-on-2, Tag Team, Handicap, even free-for-all Battle Royals. Your two options for gameplay are Story, Arcade, and Versus. Story plunks you in the role of a Robo Commander bounty hunter trying to stop various villains from taking over, then later entering in a gigantic series of tournaments that will test every bit of skill you obtained in the latter. The game will save periodically, thankfully too- there's a TON of dialogue in Custom Robo games, and this one's no different. Lacking voice-acting, you'll be listening to many “wa-wa-wa-wa's” and “muh-muh-muh-muh's” as characters speak, which can get on your nerves after awhile, especially when a scene revolves around NOTHING but talking. You'll find yourself mashing the A and B buttons screaming, “Shut up shut up, JUST SHUT UP ALREADY!! GOD!!” Arcade Mode is exactly what you'd think it is- Select parts obtained in Story Mode and blast the crap outta' other Robos one match after another. Versus is also a no-brainer. You, CPUs, or friends, have at it. One nice thing they did was, if you didn't have a memory card and couldn't create save data at bootup but now you do, whenever the game autosaves, unlike most games it'll ask you if you want to create the save data on the memory card. That's awful considerate, isn't it? Hey look, I'm already near the 800-word minimum. If THIS doesn't spell deep gameplay, hell, nothing does.

CONTROLS

A jumps, B fires your gun, R lauches bombs, which you can aim via a ground marker and your control stick by holding R, and L launches pods. Once you complete the first half of the story mode, tilting the C-stick up toggles between First-Person and overhead crane views. Y, when you're fighting more than one Robo, switches your focus on another opponent. Of course you can always change the button functions in the options menu.

SOUND

Meh, nothing really stands out, and most of the BGMs, save for a few tracks, are easily forgettable. Though it does have one AWESOME jazz medley somewhere in there.

LASTABILITY

Once you've finally finished both halves of the Story Mode, you'll have likely only gotten half of the available parts. The rest are hidden in places in the real world areas, others you need to beat a tournament to unlock, and many of them, like the Rakansen and Athena Robos, are damn near impossible to attain. All in all, it'll take you a ridiculous amount of time to finally find collect everything the game has to offer. And even then it's still fun to whip out and whup your friends with every now and then.

OVERALL: 8/10

If you can stomach the horrible graphics and mediocre audio, Custom Robo's a definite keeper.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/06