Tokobot Plus: Mysteries of the Karakuri
Developer: Tecmo
Publisher: Take Two
Release Date: Out Now
Players: 1
Words By:

Back in the eighties, when I was a little boy, there was a toy robot advertised on the television. I can't remember the name of it, but I do remember it was supposed to fetch you drinks and the like - well, the advert gave that impression. It wasn't until quite a few years later that I realised that this was probably a lie.

In Tokobot Plus, you play as Bolt, a boy who one day discovers a small robot, called a Tokobot amongst ruins of an ancient civilisation. Actually, he seems to discover several Tokobots, and is able to 'joint' them together to use as a weapon, help solve puzzles, or occasionally turn into a single giant robot that can also fight or help solve puzzles – robots really are amazing things. Anyway... bad stuff happens and our young hero has to use the Tokobots to save the day. I'd like to say that my lack of in depth coverage of the plot was because I don't want to spoil it for you, but the reality is that I didn't understand what was going on most of the time.

You see, the game has a sort of Saturday morning kids' anime show presentation – colourful graphics, wacky costume design, annoying voice over, and simple dialogue where the characters must repeat the blindingly obvious three times. Unfortunately I seem to have some kind of brain bypass route for this kind of content. Still, the presentation is of pretty good quality, although the game levels themselves are rather bland and cramped and there's a distinct lack of detail on everything – almost certainly a hangover from this being a port from the PSP game 'Tokobot'.

The puzzles are all fairly simple, or at least, they should be, but the camera collides with the cramped environments all over the place, adding an unwanted layer of difficulty to some of the puzzles. When you look at the quality that Tokobot has to compete against in this genre, it's not really acceptable.

If you're a 3D-platforming fanatic and you have a PSP then I can see you perhaps picking up the PSP version, albeit largely thanks to a lack of much else on the platform. However, stretching the game out to the big screen doesn't do it any favours and on the PS2 there are plenty of other games out there that offer greater depth and fun than Tokobot.


Best Bits

- Presentation is nice
Worst Bits

- It's a conversion from a PSP game and it shows

by: Jocky

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