Hands on with DS' little helper - Chibi-Robo
He's only 11 cm tall but has to clean up an entire park as Chibi-Robo goes on Park Patrol
The Japanese have given many things to popular culture but perhaps their greatest gifts have been Godzilla and the love of robots. In fact, Godzilla fighting robots is about as much fun as the average salaryman can take before having to head down to his local Beatles karaoke bar to calm down.
Indeed Godzilla fighting a huge robot (who if memory serves would have to be at least 30 stories high, head in the sky... etc to have any chance against the prehistoric victim of US nuclear testing), should be enough to impress any red bloodied fella.
A mechanical home-help only 11 centimetres tall is less likely to get the pulses racing, but that's what we're looking at when it comes to Chibi-Robo. And if his diminutive size wasn't enough, he's definitely a goody-goody robot too. In Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol, your main job is to go around the park and tidy up.
Thankfully though he does have some good qualities. For one thing Chibi-Robo is quite cute, at least in a shiny chrome retro-robot stylee. The way he wanders around trailing a large electrical plug behind him also provides a neat structure for a game, as the more things you do, the more Chibi-Robo's energy drains down (as shown in the top right hand side of the screen), leaving you with some surprisingly nail-biting, 'will I, won't I make it back to the plug' situations.
In terms of your actual tasks in the game, there's a bit more to it than tidying up too as the flowers in the park have actually been infected by evil (wooooh!).
Getting them back to normal was the main task in Nintendo's E3 demo, which is a process you accomplish using your trusty water squirter. A game with plenty of touchscreen action, you have to siphon up water with your stylus and then squirt it over the flowers to get them on the road to recovery. Then it's time to break out your wheel of steel and scratch your hot DJ breaks on your record player, again using your stylus. Pleasing the flowers with the rhythm of your music brings out their love as hearts pop out from them.
And simply put, the more hearts you get, the more energy you can store, and the further you can head into the park.
Although not available in the demo mission, Nintendo says your range will also be increased thanks to various vehicles such as touchscreen controlled bicycles, buggies, cars and boats, but be careful of the latter as if you fall into the water, it's game over for your battery-powered robot.
The further you venture into the park, the more evil monsters you'll come across, and despite them looking like something out of the film V For Vendetta, they are actually just polluted raindrops you can dispatch using your water squirter.
Advising you in your quest is your mate Telly Vision. He remains in your park-side base, which also acts as your main refuelling spot. Like much of the game, he's a bit mad and despite not having a mouth, wants to be a singer.
All of which brings us back again to those Japanese gifts to popular culture - not all of them are successful.
So Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol seems unlikely to be a huge DS hit, even in its homeland, but with its madcap scenario and interesting hero, it certainly provided us with fun for 15 minutes or so, and although the game's yet to get a firm UK release date, it has enough promise for us to expect to see it in shops before the end of the year.
