Late to the Crap: Chibi Robo! Zip Lash
Chibi Robo! Zip Lash was released on 3DS platforms in 2015 and published by Nintendo. The game was developed by Vanpool (known for the Dillon games on eShop) and Skip Ltd. (known for the Art Style and previous Chibi-Robo titles).
Why did I play this?
So why did I even bother playing this game suddenly? The game has a Metacritic score of 59, which indicates that it's probably garbage (or as platformer fans know it, Sonic quality). Meanwhile, the 3DS has a number of great platformers (Mutant Mudds series, Poochy & Yoshi's Island). The simple answer: I didn't think the demo was too bad and the game was cheap; I paid EUR10 for the game bundle which also includes the Chibi-Robo Amiibo. Unfortunately, after playing the game, I know why it is so cheap.
What makes this game so bad?
The sad truth first: the entirety of the game is bad. I haven't found any redeeming features in the game that show promise for a good title.
- Controls: For a good 2D platformer it's absolutely necessary to have good and somewhat precise controls. This game's controls are sadly neither. You never have good control of the lash, especially as the quick shot only fires diagonally or horizontally, but not in-between or vertically. If the collision detection wasn't also so bad, this might have been less of an issue. But with both being terribly designed, I dropped to death many times as the lash would not stick to the orange material that it is meant to stick to. The other parts of the controls are just as bad: for the fluttering move you never really know how far to the left or right you can flutter or for how long you can flutter; to cancel the long lash you need to press the R button when it would have been far more intuitive if it would cancel automatically if you press the short lash button when attacking an enemy. And you want to know how to open doors? Well, you need to tilt the 3DS to the side as if you were unlocking a lock; sounds as stupid as it is.
- Level design: What is there to say about the level design? Not much. It's boring and uninspired. Everything is pretty generic, from the platforming elements to the graphics. Retry points are put at points after which you first need to walk without any obstacles and then watch some door cutscenes until your back in action (and that takes time...).
- Bonus levels/final boss: It seems as if the developers also found the game to be pretty boring. So they decided to spice it up with some special levels in which Chibi-Robo rides on a skateboard, wakeboard or on a balloon. These levels are as much fun as the normal levels (in other words: none). The final boss follows this design philosophy and changes the gameplay completely: all of a sudden it's more like a poorly thought-out beat'em'up than a platformer. As it's such a strange change, the developers even display control instructions on the bottom screen during the entire battle.
- Collectibles: Each level has 1-2 candies, 3 coins, and 3 mini-Chibi-Robos to collect. In addition, if you decide to replay a level, you can catch a small alien and bring it safely to its UFO. Then you get one out of five letters to get that level's special outfit; to get the remaining 4 characters you need to look out on Miiverse where other users might have found them. Well, you can also just go on Gamefaqs.com where the codes are already listed. Unfortunately, to get the bonus outfits you still need to replay each level and rescue the alien. Replaying these levels, thanks no - I don't want those outfits then.
How is the Amiibo integration?
I haven't been a big fan of Amiibos as I didn't want all the plastic garbage lying around. Pretty much none of my 3DS games use them anyway. So this title was my first experience with full Amiibo integration, so I hope it's not always this bad. The Amiibo allows users to play as Super Chibi-Robo in levels, allows users to level up their Amiibo after each level, and gives access to a capsule machine. Super Chibi-Robo just makes the character faster, have a longer lash, and more energy. Leveling up your Amiibo enables the user to get rarer items in the capsule machine. And the capsule machine just spits out 200 in-game figurines (beware, you can get each of them more than once and they are given out at random). After beating the final boss, you unfortunately also get 6 extra levels (an entire extra world) through the machine. This all doesn't sound too bad, but using the Amiibo is extremely cumbersome. For levelling up my Amiibo, why do I need to scan it twice? And why do I need to scan it after each level? Why do I need to scan the Amiibo every time again when I want to use the capsule machine?
By the way, it's slow.
Everything is slow. Really slow. An NPC is telling you something? You can't skip that (you really want to because it's cringeworthy as hell) or make the text move faster. If you want to progress to the next level, you first need to watch the "level complete" screen where all your collectibles are shown. Then you can level up your Amiibo, which also takes relatively long, then a cutscene is shown where your spaceship is moving. Then you have a fortune wheel which decides which level of the current world you play next. Then another cutscene. And then you can finally play the next level. Yes, it takes very long to finally play the next level. If you use the capsule machine, every time you draw a capsule, a small animation is shown after which a presentation of your newly received figurine is shown. Because it's so boring, I was simultaneously browsing the internet on my phone while continuously pressing A on my 3DS to repeat the drawing process.
Final word
What's left to say? Avoid this crap title and show more faith in game review scores, they weren't far off here. The developers of this title were completely inept at making a good 2D platformer (or they simply hoped to earn a contract with Sega for a new Sonic game - the quality is right there). Even a price of EUR10 is still a rip-off as there are far better titles out there at that price.
Chibi Robo! Zip Lash was released on 3DS platforms in 2015 and published by Nintendo. The game was developed by Vanpool (known for the Dillon games on eShop) and Skip Ltd. (known for the Art Style and previous Chibi-Robo titles).
Why did I play this?
So why did I even bother playing this game suddenly? The game has a Metacritic score of 59, which indicates that it's probably garbage (or as platformer fans know it, Sonic quality). Meanwhile, the 3DS has a number of great platformers (Mutant Mudds series, Poochy & Yoshi's Island). The simple answer: I didn't think the demo was too bad and the game was cheap; I paid EUR10 for the game bundle which also includes the Chibi-Robo Amiibo. Unfortunately, after playing the game, I know why it is so cheap.
What makes this game so bad?
The sad truth first: the entirety of the game is bad. I haven't found any redeeming features in the game that show promise for a good title.
- Controls: For a good 2D platformer it's absolutely necessary to have good and somewhat precise controls. This game's controls are sadly neither. You never have good control of the lash, especially as the quick shot only fires diagonally or horizontally, but not in-between or vertically. If the collision detection wasn't also so bad, this might have been less of an issue. But with both being terribly designed, I dropped to death many times as the lash would not stick to the orange material that it is meant to stick to. The other parts of the controls are just as bad: for the fluttering move you never really know how far to the left or right you can flutter or for how long you can flutter; to cancel the long lash you need to press the R button when it would have been far more intuitive if it would cancel automatically if you press the short lash button when attacking an enemy. And you want to know how to open doors? Well, you need to tilt the 3DS to the side as if you were unlocking a lock; sounds as stupid as it is.
- Level design: What is there to say about the level design? Not much. It's boring and uninspired. Everything is pretty generic, from the platforming elements to the graphics. Retry points are put at points after which you first need to walk without any obstacles and then watch some door cutscenes until your back in action (and that takes time...).
- Bonus levels/final boss: It seems as if the developers also found the game to be pretty boring. So they decided to spice it up with some special levels in which Chibi-Robo rides on a skateboard, wakeboard or on a balloon. These levels are as much fun as the normal levels (in other words: none). The final boss follows this design philosophy and changes the gameplay completely: all of a sudden it's more like a poorly thought-out beat'em'up than a platformer. As it's such a strange change, the developers even display control instructions on the bottom screen during the entire battle.
- Collectibles: Each level has 1-2 candies, 3 coins, and 3 mini-Chibi-Robos to collect. In addition, if you decide to replay a level, you can catch a small alien and bring it safely to its UFO. Then you get one out of five letters to get that level's special outfit; to get the remaining 4 characters you need to look out on Miiverse where other users might have found them. Well, you can also just go on Gamefaqs.com where the codes are already listed. Unfortunately, to get the bonus outfits you still need to replay each level and rescue the alien. Replaying these levels, thanks no - I don't want those outfits then.
How is the Amiibo integration?
I haven't been a big fan of Amiibos as I didn't want all the plastic garbage lying around. Pretty much none of my 3DS games use them anyway. So this title was my first experience with full Amiibo integration, so I hope it's not always this bad. The Amiibo allows users to play as Super Chibi-Robo in levels, allows users to level up their Amiibo after each level, and gives access to a capsule machine. Super Chibi-Robo just makes the character faster, have a longer lash, and more energy. Leveling up your Amiibo enables the user to get rarer items in the capsule machine. And the capsule machine just spits out 200 in-game figurines (beware, you can get each of them more than once and they are given out at random). After beating the final boss, you unfortunately also get 6 extra levels (an entire extra world) through the machine. This all doesn't sound too bad, but using the Amiibo is extremely cumbersome. For levelling up my Amiibo, why do I need to scan it twice? And why do I need to scan it after each level? Why do I need to scan the Amiibo every time again when I want to use the capsule machine?
By the way, it's slow.
Everything is slow. Really slow. An NPC is telling you something? You can't skip that (you really want to because it's cringeworthy as hell) or make the text move faster. If you want to progress to the next level, you first need to watch the "level complete" screen where all your collectibles are shown. Then you can level up your Amiibo, which also takes relatively long, then a cutscene is shown where your spaceship is moving. Then you have a fortune wheel which decides which level of the current world you play next. Then another cutscene. And then you can finally play the next level. Yes, it takes very long to finally play the next level. If you use the capsule machine, every time you draw a capsule, a small animation is shown after which a presentation of your newly received figurine is shown. Because it's so boring, I was simultaneously browsing the internet on my phone while continuously pressing A on my 3DS to repeat the drawing process.
Final word
What's left to say? Avoid this crap title and show more faith in game review scores, they weren't far off here. The developers of this title were completely inept at making a good 2D platformer (or they simply hoped to earn a contract with Sega for a new Sonic game - the quality is right there). Even a price of EUR10 is still a rip-off as there are far better titles out there at that price.