One of the games I got some hands-on time with at PAX East was the upcoming WiiWare game, Frobot. The cleverly titled game stars, as you may imagine, a robot with an afro who is tasked with saving his five robot honeys from the evil corporation, Microshaft (har har).
The game has been described by its developers as being the love-child of The Legend of Zelda and Tanks from the Wii Play collection. This is an extremely accurate comparison, as those are the two games that immediately came to mind when I picked up the controller. The game plays from the classic 2D, overhead perspective, and the levels play out like dungeons from the classic 2D Zelda titles.
The controls are where the Tanks comparison comes in. You maneuver around the maps in a tank like fashion, using the Wiimote pointer to fire a number of different weapons, including standard missiles and a disco ball bomb.
Unfortunately, what I played of the single player campaign failed to impress me. Granted, I wasn’t able to play very far into the game, but the simplistic door-opening puzzles I was tasked with weren’t taking my breath away.
The multiplayer, however, was more enjoyable. The local multiplayer is again set up like Tanks, where you roll around several arenas, trying to take out your rivals. I was able to play through a few different arenas with a friend and it was certainly enjoyable, although I don’t think it will have a lot of replay value.
My impressions of the game, therefore, are mixed. It has the humor aspect nailed down pretty well, and it’s certainly borrowing ideas from the best possible source. However, simply replicating Zelda’s gameplay is not going to make for a compelling adventure. We’ll see how the final version shapes up when it becomes available for download sometime in the next couple of months.
I played this at SC and actually enjoyed it quite a bit.