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Chibi Robo! Park Patrol Review for the Nintendo DS (NDS)

Chibi Robo! Park Patrol Review for the Nintendo DS (NDS)

Great Things Come In Small Sizes

Despite an ongoing household boycott of Wal-Mart, the sole opportunity to obtain a much desired copy of Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol presented a magnetic pull (temporarily) strong enough to break all mental barriers erected as a result of a fearsome personal loathing for the box-store behemoth.

Chibi Robo! Park Patrol screenshot

It was by fortuitous happenstance that I returned unscathed from the bowels of the beast – with soul intact no less – clutching in sweaty palm the object which inspired such a base journey to the threshold of hell. Was a game about an environmentally conscious four-inch tall robot charged with tending the grounds of a fledgling park and bringing happiness to the world worth glaring into the murk depths of the abyss? Ultimately…yes.

Players who remained loyal to the Game Cube until its demise were likely to have taken note of the original Chibi-Robo, a mysteriously addictive title which proved directing a cute robot to do virtual housework for countless hours was actually far more preferable to cleaning one’s own abode. Helping Chibi-Robo tend to the needs of the Sandersons while exploring their home and interacting with its other bizarre inhabitants was an imaginative, charming endeavor. Park Patrol is a somewhat different animal altogether, yet it is no less entrancing.

Things get going just as Citrusoft Robotics completes development of a new environmentally-friendly Chibi-Robo prototype, sending scores of the little robotic helpers out by the truckload to parks worldwide. Dropped unceremoniously at the entryway to a particularly barren park, Chibi-Robo must revitalize the public recreational space by growing flowers and making improvements to turn it from a polluted dust bowl to an extravagant green wonderland. The story takes a while to develop, progressing in small bits here and there, but it’s definitely interesting. As before, the Chibi-House serves as your center of operations. Inside you’ll be able to recharge your battery, unlock new items, make design adjustments to your park, and gain upgrades. It’s also where you’ll find your new advisor Chet, a woefully housebound robot with amusing neurotic tendencies and a knack for giving redundant advice. Chet is useful in other ways: he can convert happy points into clean watts, which can be used to recharge Chibi-Robo or purchase helpful upgrades.

Chibi Robo! Park Patrol screenshot

Bright color-schemes and hyper upbeat graphics featured in the DS spin-off go well beyond the cheerful tones of the first Chibi-Robo title. The mixture of strange kiddie colors and neon tones reach an almost nauseatingly exuberant level, yet they somehow manage to work at the same time. Other than a little blinding at times, the visuals are quite good. The cast of zany characters you’ll run into and eventually befriend is equally colorful. There are caffeinated penguins, a French marionette, a plastic tree, a solitary Free Ranger, and others, each with their own distinct quirks and personalities. Character voices retain the same silly garbled style of the first game, and some of the lighthearted musical sound effects return as well.

In Park Patrol, happiness is a renewable energy resource primarily garnered from gardening and rejuvenating dead patches of sandy earth. Initially, the park starts out with only a few swaths of tilled soil where flowers can safely bloom. Armed with a water dropper and a sweet boombox, Chibi-Robo must nurture the existing flowers back to health. This is done by spinning records on the touch screen with the stylus and throwing an impromptu dance party. Keeping the music steady will give you a high score, causing the flowers to bloom and shoot buds out into the nearby soil. Watering the buds will make new flowers grow and score more happy points. Moving around is simple d-pad work, but most other controls involve well-implemented and clever touch features. You’ll be manually pumping the water, interacting with objects, steering vehicles, and pedaling along, among other tasks.

Chibi Robo! Park Patrol screenshot

To make things interesting, there are a few obstacles to overcome while working on park cleanup efforts. As the story progresses, the game’s antagonists, Miasmo and Sergeant Smogglor, destroyers of parks and patrons of pollution, unleash a near-daily stream of flower raids. They’ll send smoglings – who look like walking eight balls with clown faces – forth to infest flowers and run amok. Spraying them with a stead stream of water will cause them to pop. If you don’t take care of them immediately they’ll spread throughout the park polluting flowers. Any flower which has been corrupted by the smoglings will turn black and die at the end of the day. Since continually increasing your flower population is integral to your park’s progression, dispatching smoglings becomes a routine chore.

Playing groundskeeper is a blast, but anyone expecting the same kind of experience found in the original may find themselves feeling slighted at first. It’s easy to think of Park Patrol as Chibi-Robo lite. Compared to the original, the emphasis on exploration is greatly diminished, and the overall gameplay environment is much smaller. Aside from the park grounds, which are fortunately quite large, you can send Chibi across the street to a town area consisting of a few storefronts, an alleyway, and a burger joint.

Chibi Robo! Park Patrol screenshot

There’s not much to do there besides sell flowers for happy points, hunt through garbage for hidden items, and recruit pals to help you work on the park. There aren’t as many areas to explore, but the expansive park management element almost completely makes up for it.

When it comes to building up your park, you have complete control over every aspect of its appearance. Attracting people to the park is a major goal, and you’ll greatly improve the number of visitors to the area by including interactive elements, games, utility structures, and other fun features, along with enhancing its natural beauty. Numerous enhancements can be unlocked by finding hidden cartridges located throughout the game. The cartridges can be fed into a wall-mounted Famicom unit located in the Chibi-House. Stumbling across new cartridges is exciting and adding new features to your park is actually quite satisfying. Whether it’s putting in a trampoline, a park bench, a windmill for power generation, or even simple items like trees and streams, there’s a lot of cool things you can do with the space. Finding your way around the park also becomes easier once you unlock a handful of cute vehicles for Chibi-Robo. Watching him pedal around on a little bicycle is curiously heart-warming.

Even though the gameplay has changed somewhat drastically, Park Patrol still manages to capture the delightful essence of the original, only in a smaller package. The environmental conservation theme is also refreshing to see in a game. Hopefully it will turn on some of the younger players the idea of cleaning up the environment while keeping them entertained. Park Patrol is a great stepping stone for Chibi-Robo. Let’s just cross our fingers the little guy makes the jump back to a full-blown console game in near future.

Features:

  • A pollution epidemic is transforming the local park into a contaminated wasteland. It’s up to Chibi-Robo to return the park to its former glory and defeat Sergeant Smogglor, champion of all things toxic and gross. With his trusty squirter and boom box in hand, Chibi must raise flowers, defeat noxious Smoglings, and save the world.
  • Touch controls let you interact with the world in new ways. Slide the stylus with good timing to squirt enemies, water flowers, pedal your bike, and blast your boom box.
  • Chibi’s mission is bigger than ever this time around. Instead of living in a single home with one family, Chibi’s on his own in the park now, spreading happiness to an entire town.
  • As Chibi progresses in this green adventure, he’ll meet all sorts of colorful characters, like marionette Francois, football mascot Bull, and soda “spokesanimals” Pop and Fizz. If Chibi befriends these toys, they will help him in his quest to fix the park.

  • Rating out of 5 Rating Description

    4.5

    Graphics
    Strangely colored, but a joy to look at nonetheless.

    4.2

    Control
    Lots of excellent touch screen control integration. Camera angles could use improvement.

    3.9

    Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
    The same funny garbled speech and musical style as the previous game, just slightly less of it.

    4.0

    Play Value
    Aside from a disappointing lack of areas to explore, the game makes up for its faults with tons of park management customization and fun features to unlock. A lengthy adventure with a slow pace.

    4.1

    Overall Rating Great
    Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.
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