Chibi Robo is back, now bringing happiness to everyone trough a conscient fight for nature. Just as the first Chibi Robo on GameCube approached a touchy theme of excessive consumming, and the DS version, while smaller in size, don’t drop the ball, attacking deforestation and consequently global warming.
While on GameCube, Chibi Robo was a toy that brought happiness to families, on Nintendo DS, the little robot’s role is independent, taking care of parks so that they explode with flowers and threes, bringing happiness to those who visit them.
Don’t get fooled by it’s innocent look, Chibi Robo always bring incredible concepts with a gentle kiddy way of approaching important themes while pulling some laughs from all ages.
Your mission begins with a horrible park, having to fix it and plant flowers so that it can attract visitors and you get Happy Points. The main scheme on the game is planting flowers and we are not talking about ten, one hundred, but over one thousand! Only Chibi Robo can pull that kind of work while keeping itself fun.
The park is made of a seven by seven square grid with different characteristics. In fertile soil you’ll be planting flowers, while sand as to be changed into fertile soil. Whenever you plant thirty flowers on a square, it will become green, having completed your mission on that part.
It may seem simple, but it’s not. Each flower has to be planted manually trough a system. White flower have to be stimulated so that they release seeds and you can water them so that more flowers grow, some of them white, getting everything on loop. All of this while you keep your battery up, since everything you do will drain it.
To do so, you use a new tool, a tape to stimulate the white flowers and the return of the syringe to water them, being that now you don’t have to refill everytime you wanna use it.
All the gameplay is done with the touch screen, the d-pad is limited to move Chibi Robo. Roll the tape in the rhythm to make flowers release seeds, push the syringue on screen to water them and things like that.
Of course, the game is not that simple, soon a villain will come to fight you, Miasmo, his sergeant, and small irritating creatures called Smoglins, that will keep trying to destroy your garden. There’s no more Chibi Blaster, the weapon from the GameCube version, so you’ll have to fight them with what you have in hand (or what you’re driving... yeah, you can!).
Talking about the GameCube version and driving, one of its biggest let downs was that you worked a lot to buy a car just to find out you wouldn’t be driving it, it was just a minigame. That doesn’t happen on Nintendo DS, you’ll be able to get Chibi Riders, vehicles that will help you move faster around your park.
Besides the park there’s still a little town, basically a fast food shop, a flower shop, a toy store, and an alley where the toys hang out. Just like in the previous game, Chibi Robo can talk with toys, that when people aren’t looking, have life on its own. Each one of them has a story which you’ll have to solve during the game, all extremely charismatics.
Those toys act as your workers, cause besides planting you’ll also be building things on your park, like benchs, trash cans, clock towers, all kind of useful itens. The clock tower even lets you change day’s duration. There are also some minigames that you can build, but nothing really fun.
Besides the toys, Chibi is not alone, his old bud Tellyvision got replaced by some king of mechanical head that stays at Chibi House, converting your Happy Points into Watts. Unfortunately, you’ll have to hear all of his speech everytime you want to save the game or convert points.
The graphics are really something, it’s not that far from the GameCube version, with big environments and giant legs walking trough the streets or enormous cars that will hit you if you cross while in the red light.
It’s possibly one of the prettiest games on DS when we consider the proportion involved. Sometimes there are some small problems like flowers clipping or even yourself entering some walls, being specially often when you’re using a ride. None of those problems are big enough to hurt the game tough, since it’s a lot more impressive on its qualities.
The musics are also great, calm at most part, giving you the feeling of gardening, and a little more agitated when there are enemies somewhere on the screen. The same system from GameCube is still on here, whenever you use an item it’s like as if you were playing an instrument, forming music.
Sound effects are also great, there’s no voice over, but some of the usual random baby talk while the characters speak. Incredibly, those sounds are better than the GameCube version. Some of the sounds are also pretty cool, like the Smoglins’ voices that are almost whistles.
Chibi Robo: Park Patrol has a huge amount of content just by the fact that repeating everything thousands of times is just so much fun, while you do some differents in the middle of planting and fixing.
Even after you finish the main story, there are dozens of extras that can keep you playing, more precisely, completing your park and helping the toys to get over their problems. Don’t let its appearance fools you, this is a game that can’t sta out of anyone’s collection, independente of age.
