Demo Review 6: Frobot

He's a robot... with a giant afro! In another dimension, in a time that doesn't exist... In fact, Year 1 after the extinction of mankind... The world is controlled by robots, and there's that company who claims to want to achieve world peace... Except they want to destroy the world instead. So, seeing as all the robots are in danger, the oppressed ones decided to build Frobot, whose freshness will overcome the dark forces of robotics. Helped by five very human-looking robots (TOO human-looking, in fact; Hello, uncanny valley!), Frobot will dance until the world is saved!

As soon as the demo begins, you're shown how the game works, the controls and what each button does on the Wiimote and the Nunchuk. Your character, Frobot, has to progress through some sort of factory with puzzles. You have to explore around the rooms and solve the puzzles to go forward. Frobot can access a large selection of weapons, from his regular laser gun that shoots spherical lasers to land mines to torpedoes. The levels contain a multitude of traps and things that can kill you. Heck, your laser spheres will bounce off walls and could kill you if you get hit by them!

The story – or at least, the beginning – is a creative idea. All this happens after an apocalypse of sorts, when mankind is extinct, and all that is left on the world is the robots created by us. Feels like the untold story behind the CGI movie Robots. The protagonist seems like a stereotypical disco dude, until you remember that it's a robot! The five assistants are very useful, as well; they give you hints on what you must do. In some cases, it doesn't help much, but eh. Also, Frobot starts with 30 lives. I found that a lot at first, until I saw how easy it was to get yourself killed in this game. My guess is that the developers preferred to give the character lots of lives so that the players could have time to adapt to the controls and the many elements of the puzzles. The 3D environments aren't half bad, either.

That said, it's not perfect. The character moves VERY slowly, and while there's a way to speed him up, it's kind of dangerous. The character isn't impervious to his own weapons, as he will explode if he stands too close to a mine he blows up. Some of the puzzles are very complicated, too.

Personally, I like the idea and the story, but the minutes I spent playing this game proved to me that this game wasn't for me. Maybe it just boils down to how it's made. But in the end, I sill suggest you try the demo before buying the game. Just in case.