Robots

"Error. Error! ERROR!"

Nowadays, a video game adaptation of a movie is a fairly common sight. As the company is typically more interested in a little extra profit rather than designing any sort of quality game, these licensed games tend to be terribly made and are typically only a thinly guised attempt to bilk the movie for as much money as humanly possible. Robots for the DS manages to defy this trend in games adapted from movies. Robots isn't just bad. Robots is terrible. This title reaches levels of awful that most games cannot even fathom. Typically, when playing through a game, despite how terrible some aspects of it might be, there is usually some redeeming quality to the game regardless of how insignificant it might be. However, despite how thorough you search may be, you're not going to find anything redeemable in this title.

This game is centered on a young, wholesome robot named Rodney Copperbottom. I seriously hope you found that amusing, as that is pretty much as clever as this game gets. If you have ever seen the movie Robots, the plot of this title is essentially a bare bones port of it. Essentially, take whatever you possibly enjoyed about the movie, remove it but leave in the robots, and you have the plot of this game. Rodney wants to create toys for a living, but an evil robot has usurped the benevolent toy company and replaced it with his evil, malevolent enterprise of superficial upgrades for robots. Now, you must fight both this malfeasant and the forces of boredom and rescue the denizens of this robot dystopia. All of your favorite characters do resurface in this game for a full ten or twenty seconds of screen time before disappearing. There really is nothing really connecting this game to the movie other than the name, so even the fans of the movie really have no incentive to purchase Robots. While licensed games are notorious for money grabbing antics, Robots is one of the very worst I've encountered. Most of these types of titles manage to salvage at least some of the charm and allure of the movie, but Robots fails on this front as well. Really though, so with little connecting the game to the movie, it simply appears as if the developers just slapped the Robots name on this generic title in hopes of making a few bucks without creating a worthwhile product.

Robots is a generic rip-off of any of the recent platformer/adventure games for any of the handheld systems. You travel throughout the level fighting evil, nefarious robots and collecting upgrades after boss battles to allow you to delve further into the robot heart of darkness and gain access to new, even more boring levels. Rodney continues to evolve by learning techniques such as jump or glide after boss battles, or by finding pieces of gadgets and weapons that can be assembled and allow access to new areas. Technically, there really isn't that much wrong with the control scheme or general gameplay options; however, there isn't much right either. Nearly everything about this game has been implemented better in dozens of other titles and there is nearly no innovation or originality in this title. The few new aspects that Robots attempts to introduce are botched so badly that it will make you wish the developers had just stuck to stealing other peoples' ideas. Most of these innovations are implementations of the DS touch screen functionality, and all of them are terrible. After you collect enough parts for your gadgets, you are allowed to assemble them using the stylus to maneuver the pieces to their correct position. While if this had been used properly, it would have at best been an annoying and boring feature, it is so utterly cumbersome that it really becomes more of a nuisance than anything else. Rotating the pieces never works as well as it should and it is difficult to properly maneuver new pieces of the gadgets to the proper locations without suffering from an apoplexy. You can also sketch on the map on the lower screen to make notes of rooms you have to remember or scrawl out various profanities and maledictions. While the former will only be used marginally, I can promise that you will find the latter function extremely useful. Robots is the first title that allows you to express your level of hatred on the game itself, and then allow you to erase it moments later so you can reevaluate just how terrible the game is.

While the controls, characters, and story are definitely bad, the graphics and sound are somehow even worse. These graphics might have been passable on a GBA, but the capacity of the DS is so much higher and there really is no excuse for the horrific visuals in this game. Playing for too long will most likely give you a headache or seizure or possibly both. This game really is a generation or so behind, and they attempt to implement a pseudo-3D graphical style to compensate. While the game does allow movement in all three directions, this really is the only foray into the third dimension taken by the game. For the most part, the characters all appear to be in 2D traveling through the “3D” environments. Everything is just a giant mess though, as the characters, environments and items all look blurry and are seriously appalling. The sound and music are beyond annoying and those who can hear are guaranteed to turn the volume off within the first ten minutes.

There are items to collects, such as stills from the movie, but the problem is you actually have to play through the game to get these items, which is a chore in and of itself. These really aren't anything that special, as they are fairly dull and are nothing you can't find by just watching the movie itself. Certainly, they are not significant or interesting enough to actually warrant dedicating more time to actually playing Robots. This game is also ridiculously short, even with the inclusion of supplemental content. The game will take you all of three hours to complete, a little more if you want all of the extra photos and gadgets, and a little less if you decide to smash the game in frustration. This is primarily due to the fact that the game is one of the easiest you will encounter and Rodney will most likely never even come close to dying. This is sort of a blessing though, as it absolutely minimizes the amount of time you have to waste on Robots. Considering the thirty dollar price tag at stores, though, it is entirely absurd to consider the fact that you are paying close to ten dollars per gameplay hour for the title. Even the highest caliber games wouldn't merit a price this steep, and Robots certainly doesn't.

There really is nothing to get excited about or laud in Robots. It fails in terms of gameplay, graphics, sound, characters, story, and pretty much any other aspect important to games that you can think of. If you have absolutely already played through every other DS game and need a new title, I still could not recommend Robots. Looking back, Robots is probably the first game in recent memory that fails to improve on the experience of playing the game when the console is off. I must emphatically warn against purchase, rental, or any sort of interaction with this game as something this terrible must cause some sort of communicable disease. Simply put, this is one game that is bound to please nobody, except the individuals who own the rights to Robots and possibly sadomasochists. With all of the good games out there for the DS, there are definitely much better options out there to get your handheld fix.

User Friendly (THE GOOD):
+Gameplay-wise, everything “works”
+Probably a decent title if it had been released six or seven years ago

Malfunction (THE BAD):
-The visuals are some of the worst this generation of handheld games has seen
-Too easy, too short; definitely not worth the money
-Awful music and sound effects
-Highly generic and derivative feel to the entire game
-The one or two unique concepts to this title are very poorly executed

SYSTEM ERROR (THE UGLY): First, take a highly derivative kids' movie. Then, translate that into a highly derivative console game. Then, take away any aspect of entertainment, devolve the graphics into something offensive on a 16-bit entertainment system, and port that game over to a handheld system. You now have the basic formula for Robots, but you still have to add in the effect of crippling depression that results from wasting your money and time on this game.

THE VERDICT: 2.00/10.00

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/07