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Elebits Preview

Written by DM on Thursday, October 19 2006

Elebits is one of the more eccentric titles that will be debuting along with the Nintendo Wii. This quirky game from Konami features small creatures called Elebits who, in essence, are the driving force behind electricity in today’s society. Of course, they finally get fed up with out power abuse and decide to go on strike. It is your job to round up these litter buggers and set them back to work powering all of the world’s modern devices (including the Nintendo Wii’s of the world, we are sure.)

The object of Elebits is to use the Wiimote and nunchuck attachment to zap the little Elebits with your cattle-prod type weapon in order to obtain more and more watts. When you zap an Elebit your wattage meter goes up, and you can then power bigger and bigger devices. For instance, when you begin, you may only have enough watts to power something like a toaster or a walkman. By the end of the map, you may have enough watts to power something like a refrigerator or television.

Catching the little critters can range from fun to downright annoyingly difficult. You use the Wiimote to aim an on-screen pointer as you roam around the map in first person mode using the nunchuck controller. As soon as you spot an Elebit, you use the trigger to fire your zapper and give the little guy a jolt. At first, the controls seemed clunky and non-intuitive. Well, on suggestion of the Konami floor rep, I moved further away form the screen (about 5-6 feet). All I can say is wow, what a difference. Mark my words, folks, distance from the sensor bar is going to be key when it comes to enjoying the Nintendo Wii. The difference that one extra foot of distance from the screen made was astounding. The game went from almost unplayable to mostly intuitive and extremely entertaining. Unfortunately, Konami did not have a multiplayer setup available at the preview. We can only imagine the utter fun chaos that four-player Elebits must be.

The game itself looks great for a non-HD resolution title. Those who are saying that Wii does not have decent graphics have obviously not played the console. The graphics, while certainly not on par with Metal Gear Solid 4 or Gears Of War, are more then adequate for the type of game play that the console will feature. Nintendo is shooting for a system that anyone can pick up and play, even non-gamers, and have a good time -- a laugh out loud good time. Elebits certainly delivers in this respect. My brother, who accompanied me to preview the game and who plays maybe one video game per year, not only enjoyed the game immensely, but is planning to purchase a Wii solely to play Elebits. Kudos Nintendo and kudos Konami.

One other thing to mention is that according to the representative I spoke with, Konami has no other Wii games in development at this point, or at least any that they want us to know about. That is fine though, because Elebits is more than enough. The game is fun, unique, and clever, and it is perfectly designed to take advantage of the Nintendo Wii’s unique control system.

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