Written by Neilie Johnson, 1/25/2009
Fans of 2006's Elebits on the Wii were likely hoping Konami would bring them a Wii sequel (a “Wii-quel”?) and might be disappointed to discover that Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero is here on the DS. To us Americans, bigger is always better but elsewhere in the world, people know how to appreciate the little things. The Japanese definitely understand the idea of good things coming in small packages and this cute little DS adventure proves it.
Kai and Zero is a fictional sequel to the first Elebits game and focuses on its ten year old hero Kai and his sidekick Zero. In this game Kai's still being neglected by his self-absorbed scientist parents but this time there's no imminent threat. The adventure in this title moves way beyond Kai's neighborhood into a more otherworldly realm when Kai sneaks into his dad's talking time-machine bus and is whisked away to another universe. Initially, Kai's just trying to find a way home but he soon discovers that elebits everywhere are running amok, upsetting the balance of the worlds they're in. Since Kai's something of an “elebit-whisperer”, it falls to him to bring these unruly little guys back in line.
Before going into the story any further, let me say this game and the DS were made for each other. While Wii controls can be clumsy, the DS allows much greater precision. Moving Kai around the environment with either the stylus or the control pad is really easy and so is collecting elebits by tap-stunning them with the stylus and then tapping Zero (or any other Omega you collect) to pick them up. As in the previous game, you collect elebits to rack up wattage which is like currency. The more of them you capture at once, the more bonus watts you earn. The more wattage you have, the more gates you can open, the more puzzles you can solve and the more Omegas you can charge up to “Master” form. It's important to shake every tree and look under every rock because in addition to higher-wattage elebits, you'll uncover batteries that increase your wattage capacity, Trace Lasers for easier elebit capture, Durability Recovery items that restore hit points and special pink elebits that grant Guard Boosts, increasing your overall health.
As you move through the various worlds, you'll encounter and rescue many different Omegas with elemental abilities like fire, water, wind and earth. Using these abilities is as simple as tapping the Omega of your choice (or selecting it with the L/R buttons) and then tapping the object you want to use its ability on. You might need the Ice Omega to freeze over a river so you can cross it or the Fire Omega to burn a vine barrier down or the Power Omega to act as a bodyguard when those pesky purple elebits cling to you like leeches. A big part of the fun is figuring out when and where to use each Omega. Beating bosses in particular requires you to think hard about which combination of your feisty little elementals you should use. Swapping among up to five Omegas on the fly is easy with the on-screen expandable/collapsible shortcut bar and other Omegas can be selected and placed on the shortcut bar from the Omega menu.
OK enough talk about mechanical stuff. The game isn't called “The Control Scheme of Kai and Zero”. It's about adventure! And adventure you will—across seven very different worlds. You'll travel through Elebit Forest, Resort Island, Elebit Mine, Ice World, Sea Temple, Ruined World and Libra of Crystal collecting elebits and doing good deeds like saving a race of elebit-worshipping villagers, restoring harmony to tourist-harassed natives and reuniting a sad snow queen and her candy-colored children.
Speaking of candy-colored, Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero is a really pretty game if, like me, you like cutscene art and character portraits so sweet they make your teeth hurt. The art style is captivating and that's good because you'll need something to distract you from the horrific VO. Once again some casting director thought it was a good idea to get a grown woman to act the part of a child by sounding whiny and pitching her voice high enough to shatter glass. Mercifully, there's not that much VO to listen to and the rest of the sound—the music and the sound effects—are very good. In fact, if you really dig the music you can listen to the themes from every world you've unlocked (along with watching cutscenes and browsing your Omega collection) at any time in the Extras menu.
As a whole, the game lives up the previous title, but there are a few things that throw a damper on the fun. As you progress, the maps become increasingly multi-level and maze-like and from an overhead view it's often difficult to tell which level you're on or even when an area is impassable. This makes for lots of wandering back and forth which apparently was intentional because solving puzzles often requires you to cross and re-cross the map. That's bad enough but to make matters worse, often when you do something like activate a switch, there's nothing aside from a cute little sound, to let you know anything at all has happened. That means—yes, you guessed it—more trudging around and around trying to figure out what's changed.
Besides the tedium of being forced to repeatedly cross the maps, a handful of other bothersome things kept this game from being great. Firstly, when you leave rooms and come back to them, many of the puzzles reset, forcing you to do them again and again. Considering how unintuitive the maps and puzzle elements can be, it only adds to the confusion that you can't always use a completed puzzle as a landmark. Secondly, the bosses are fun for the most part but the difficulty ramping of them is nonexistent. Early on, an extremely difficult fire boss made me want to break my DS in half but later on the bosses were much easier. Finally, even though swapping out Omegas to do different things is a nifty idea, it gets old having to open the Omega menu in order to change out the shortcut five. It would be cool and much more convenient if you could scroll among all of them using the control pad.
Even with these issues, the story is interesting enough to pull you through to the end. And once Story Mode is complete you can go back and capture other special Omegas until you have the entire collection. Or if you'd rather challenge a friend to an elebit battle you can fire up the multi-player on WiFi or DS wireless. Aside from a few frustrating elements Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero is a strong title that benefits from its move to the DS. It has great art, fun game play, a good story and it's a dream game for you collection junkies out there. It just goes to show; sometimes it pays to think small.
The Good: Easy controls, cute art, lots of level variety and thought-provoking puzzles.
The Bad: Maze-like maps, puzzles that reset, not enough player feedback for interactive objects.
