Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest

"Darwin makes a game"

The obscure, quirky game is always a favorite of mine, simply because few people know about it and few people have the guts to try it. Cubivore is definitely obscure and quirky. That doesn't mean it's automatically good, though.

Graphics:
The entire world is made out of blatant cubes and squares, from drops of square blood to patches of square grass. It's kind of amusing, also, to see these animals consisting of boxes and rectangular flaps walking around. My compliments for keeping a consistent style that fits all too well on the Gamecube, but the overall look is kind of ugly and drab. Poor textures. Little variety. Lots of empty space. I don't recall any framerate or loading troubles, though.

Sound:
The graphics may have been mediocre, but they were at least stylized. The sound has nothing going for it. Very few sound effects exist, and they all are distinctively grating. The music is equally off-putting and repetitive. One level started out with a neat guitar riff, and I thought, "Alright, a cool song." But then I realized that was the song, looped again and again. All sound and music is easily drowned out by the gameplay, but if you pay attention to it, you won't like what you hear.

Gameplay:
If Darwin were to design a video game, this would be it. Survival of the fittest. You are born into a world as a one-limbed piglet. Your quest immediately becomes to find food (via eating other creatures) and mating. As you progress from environment to environment, you'll meet several different kinds of animals with different colors. Eating certain color patterns mutates you into some other form, thus changing what kind of abilities you have, be it jumping farther or biting harder. As you move forward in the game, your offspring will grow more limbs, giving you greater strength and more possibilities for mutations. Sounds really fun, doesn't it? The problem, however, is the repetitive nature of the game. Not only will you be re-born three times (thus starting back at the beginning, as a different one-limbed weakling), but you find yourself doing basically the same thing level after level. Your schedule consists of attacking other beasts, stealing their colors, and moving to the next level. It can be great fun at first, but it gets really boring later on.

Controls:
Perhaps too simple. There are only two things to worry about here: jumping out of the way of attackers and attacking them in return. That's it. In the beginning, you do not have the ability to run or target an enemy while running. These come later. However, it can get annoying when you have them, are re-born, and forget you don't have them anymore. The camera is a stubborn device that you're better off not trying to control. Big surprise, eh?

Frustration:
Sometimes, you'll find yourself up against a beast that you are no match for. You have two choices: spend an hour slowing knocking its life down, or let it beat the living tar out of you. When you're a weakling, it's really hard to get anywhere in life. Wow, that sounds so familiar. The other animals will occasionally team up on you, or there may be one animal that has a fixation with following you around and harassing you. This might be a good replication of real life, but sometimes real life is too cruel for play.

Lasting Appeal:
I can't see this game taking any more than seven hours once through. There is some incentive to go back and find all the different mutations just to see what they are. There are certainly a lot of them. But the game has you restart so many times already, it's not fun to go back. Cubivore is a novel idea, but one that can't hold up for long, and the only fun to be had once you've beaten it is showing your friends just how insanely unique it is.

Overall:
I have never seen a place where you could rent this game, but renting is the only way to go. There's not enough here to keep you coming back hour after hour, and the game runs out of appeal pretty quickly. Cubivore is a neat game in design and concept, but the overall product falls short of perfection. With a little more time spent, this could have been one of those rare classics. As it is, it's only slightly above-average.

Points:
+ Darwin's video game!
+ Great style
+ Over 100 mutations
-- Repetitive levels
-- Tedious re-births
-- Gets old, fast

Score: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/04, Updated 11/07/04