Awesomely Underrated #1: Elebits

I've added a new segment to my blog called " Awesomely Underrated." I want to talk about games that I believe are underrated by the gaming community (at least by the vocal ones on the "intertubes"). There is one key criterion for this segment: I will only talk about games I have played through from start to finish. There are too many fanboys who bash or praise games without having played them and that's stupid.

I thought of this to talk up the games that I feel should get more recognition than they are getting. I'm starting to think that some hardcore gamers on the internet are pretty elitist and won't give a lot of games a chance.

This brings me to my game in question: Elebits for the Wii. I got it for Christmas in 2006 and played it over the holidays; I loved every second of it. The premise of Elebits is that the world's energy has depleted thanks to the disappearance of Elebits. With a capture gun, you must collect enough energy to bring power back into town. The game works like a first person shooter in terms of controls, but premise is much like Katamari Damacy. In fact, its similarities to Katamari are what drew me to the game in the first place.

So why were the sales of this game so low? People loved Katamari, why not this? It has similar addictive gameplay to Katamari. The world is bright and colorful. It may start of simple, but the later levels get quite difficult. Considering how much Nintendo fanboys gripe about 3rd party titles being subpar one would think people would be excited for this game. Perhaps people saw the numbers in the reviews, saw it was below an 8 and ignored it. Or perhaps gamers saw the bright colors and made assumptions on the game's quality.

It was the same problem in Japan as well, which surprised me even more. I was expecting if anything that a game like that would draw in the Japanese gamers tastes. Maybe the fact that it was a launch title it got ignored between Wii Sports, Wii Play and Zelda.

I will admit the game is not without shortcomings. The voice acting is atrocious. The controls can be awkward at times, especially when turning objects. In the game, you have to open doors and twist faucets, both feel uneasy. After about an hour my wrist hurt. Despite this, the awkwardness is not bad enough to ruin the overall gameplay. For a first generation 3rd party Wii title, the controls are pretty solid.

So this is mostly to the snobby Nintendo fanboys, but for anyone looking for something to play on the Wii, I would recommend Elebits. If you want to play something a little different that may be a bit bright and colorful this is a good choice. It's not quite as good as Katamari, but is in the same vein of uniqueness and I would recommend it to anyone that loves the Katamari franchise. It's cute, fun and highly addicting... very very very underrated, folks.

So quit whining Wii owners, there are games to play.