What sets 'Meet the Robinsons' from the countless other Disney games?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
In 'MTR', you play as the young Wilbur as he takes on baddies (well, eventually) to keep the Robinson family time machine from falling into the wrong hands.
The plot, though, isn't all that important, because quite simply, not even having this game written by Shakespeare himself could make it actually fun. The controls themselves are thoroughly frustrating. The Wii Remote is used to move the camera, which in itself is very problematic, because you constantly have to have the remote pointed toward the television. If you let it drop, the whole camera slowly moves and goes completely wonky. You can hit the '1' button to centre the camera, but it's in a very awkward position, especially for anyone who likes to centre the camera often. A lot of 'Z' targetting is used in the game (a la 'Zelda'), but why would they do this when they could have instead used the Wii Remote for something actually useful?
How a kid could figure everything out is beyond me. Even the very first challenge you're given requires you to run around a room and find a gun. Problem is, there is nothing that tells you how to get the gun. It's easy to see it hovering above you in the middle of the room, but actually getting it requires you to climb on and hop across several crates, but when you call on the mostly-useless robot Carl for a hint, he just repeatedly tells you to find the gun, not how to get the gun from its perch. These kinds of things happen repeatedly in the game. If a veteran gamer managed to get stumped, imagine a youngster...
The character dialogue is also constantly overlapping. Just as one character finishes talking, the next one always jumps in with nary a second's worth of time in between. It makes it all seem very amateur.
The graphics are nothing to gawk at. Bright colours and big, open areas are great but none of the characters look especially slick. You'd think moving an animated movie onto a game would be a natural progression, but apparently not.
Meet the Robinsons for Wii may be a recommended item if you have some young ones at home who love the movie (the game is based on, but not exact replica of, the movie). If you can ignore the bad voice work, repetitive gameplay and sub par controls (we're asking a lot, we know), then you should consider this.
Everyone else - skip it, skip it, skip it!
WHAM! Rating: |
3 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
E 10+ (Everyone 10+) |
Official Web Site: |
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