Meet the Robinsons Review

Is a game well-conceived when you take gameplay concepts from some of the highest-rated video games ever created and mish-mash them with the personalities found in a brand-new animated Disney film? Disney Interactive Studios’ Meet the Robinsons just might be the first game to do that in a fashion that isn’t a total flop–in fact, the audience for which Meet the Robinsons is aimed at should absolutely love this new video game.

Wilbur Robinson is up to his normal no-good rule-breaking lifestyle, using his father’s time-traveling machine to check out ancient Egypt. Upon arrival back home in the future (after just slightly but harmlessly changing the past), the time machine is stolen by a sinister man in a bowler hat. It’s up to Wilbur and his trusty Robinson Industries gadgets to find the Bowler Hat Guy and stop him in his tracks to recover the time machine. Since Wilbur isn’t the film’s central character, several parts of the game are unique and therefore aren’t seen in the movie, but they fit well into the personality and style anyway.

With that said, Meet the Robinsons introduces about six main areas for players to explore while transmogrifying items and interacting with other Robinson characters. The gameplay works much like a third-person action/adventure title, with a strong resemblance to recent Legend of Zelda titles. Wilbur can lock onto targets, strafe around them, interact with objects with the press of a single action button, and jump when he reaches a ledge or gap. He can shoot at targets with gadgets that appear on an inventory selector that is very similar to those in the Zelda series. The main gadgets are pretty handy. There’s the disassembler; this tool breaks down environmental objects for core materials that can be used to transmogrify objects. It also eliminates the armor or shields that some enemies might use. There’s the Chargeball glove, which fires off a small ball of electric energy–this is Wilbur’s primary attack, and it works pretty well. There’s even a scanner that allows you to check out objects in the environment, Metroid Prime-style.

Unfortunately, some control-related issues arise, especially on Nintendo Wii. The camera and targeting reticle are both controlled with the Wii remote, so players might begin to rest their hands while playing and find Wilbur staring at the ground or turning around in circles. The targeting system doesn’t work very well at all. In fact, it works badly, to be kind. For example, if Wilbur is locked onto an enemy security robot, the targeting reticle is still loose and controllable, it’s not actually “locked on.” This means that, if locked onto an enemy, you can (and probably will) still shoot at harmless walls or objects in the background while pesky surveillance robots sound alarms and summon more security robots for you to destroy. Wii players might want to take a few decimals off of my final score, just for the camera frustrations. Fortunately for non-Wii players, the camera is controlled with the right analog stick, which is a lot more familiar and less awkward.

Does this mean that Meet the Robinsons isn’t fun to play? No! The game actually has some switch-based puzzles that the younger audience will enjoy, as they’re much less complicated than those found in games like Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Most puzzles also have an element of timing: there are energy-based floors that can be activated in the Robinson basement level, and Wilbur has to quickly make his way to solid ground before the energy floors disappear and render him a victim to gravity and a deadly pit below. Speaking of deadly pits and anything deadly whatsoever, Meet the Robinsons is an easy game even without its simpler puzzles. Don’t expect the enemies found in the game to pose much of a threat, they’re quickly dispatched with Robinson tools. Wilbur never really dies either, and there is hardly a Game Over screen. If his health is completely drained, he’ll simply restart at the entrance of the current room with a full amount of health. This will surely turn away experienced gamers (if the game’s ties to a Disney movie already hadn’t), but kids will certainly welcome the forgiving difficulty.

There are a few things to do other than run around disassembling objects and shooting robots; Wilbur’s Chargeball glove is actually used for a futuristic competitive game called Chargeball. Mix air hockey and dodgeball and you’ve got something similar to Chargeball. Wilbur squares off with one opponent, and the two exchange Chargeball blasts at each others’ protective barriers that cover a goal. When the barriers are broken, the player can throw a Chargeball into the goal and score a point. Most games only require a few points to be scored, but they’re a fun distraction. There’s also a mini-game where Wilbur hops into a big ball and rolls around a track–beating the record time took me two or three tries, and it was definitely entertaining enough to be a worthwhile distraction. It’s too bad that neither of the mini-games feature any sort of multiplayer (sadly there is no multiplayer, period) but they definitely occupy some time anyway. There’s also a fair amount of objects to be found in the game’s levels–collectible action figures, secret blueprints for transmogrification purposes (think alternate costumes and wacky cheat codes), and more.

Meet the Robinsons is actually a nice-looking movie-based game, one that takes all of the style of the subject matter and recreates it virtually in an expert form. None of the game’s cinemas use the CG animation used in the film; Avalanche Software actually created clips with the in-game engine that look very nice. Sure, the particle effects and texture details aren’t top-notch, but they definitely met my expectations. The voice acting is also very nice, featuring the movie’s cast (hello, Adam West). What confused me, though, was the strange lack of pauses between lines of spoken dialogue. One character will start babbling just after another finishes, leaving absolutely no time for the player to think about what is being said. It makes the dialogue run much faster and actually seem a bit more life-like, in some cases, but there are others where pauses between speech would have seemed more realistic. Also, the sound effects are noticeably underwhelming, if not muffled.

All that said, Meet the Robinsons is a surprisingly capable game that will make the audience it is aimed at very happy. It’s a Zelda clone that has terrific production values and all of the film’s personality. It never came across as some cash-cow scheme for Disney to make more boatloads of money on Meet the Robinsons merchandise–it actually appears that Avalanche Software wanted to create a good movie-based game. What more could a kid want?