Elebits Impressions

Elebits blends simplistic gameplay with tiered difficulty which results in some seriously satisfying gameplay.

At first glance Elebits looks like Nintendo's Pikmin meets Katamari Damacy and in some ways that wouldn't be far from the truth. The little Elebit aliens resemble Pikmin and the gameplay is reminiscent of Katamari.

Essentially you look all over the current level you occupy in hopes of finding all kinds of Elebits. you zap them with your Wiimote and this in turn raises both the amount of weight you can lift and your Elebit meter. You need so many of a kind of Elebit in most levels to proceed.

Like Katamari when you roll the ball which increasingly gets larger and allows you to pick up larger objects, in Elebits the more you zap the bigger the object you can lift. You start with small plates and cabinet doors but can escalate all the way up to chairs, couches, and even entire houses.

The FPS style control scheme works perfectly in Elebits. The only thing that really detracts from the experience is some of the wonky physics. It's really annoying when you're trying to open a cabinet door only to have it open and then slowly close again. In essence, most doors of any kind require some finesse to open and keep open in order to find all the little hiding buggers.

Some may think this gameplay is a bit simplistic and repetitive and while it is at times, the developers have done a lot to mix things up. On some levels you can only break so many ceramics and on others you can only make so much noise while whipping things around. Also, don't forget there are bosses and the awesome Create-A-Level mode.

via gamebrink