"A rather genric platformer hindered by a bad camera"

Tokobot came to my attention like most of those "sleeper hits" do. Mild buzz online, decent reviews ect. Grabbed it for 19.99 at Best Buy and loved it... Until I got half way through the game that is. Around then the game kind of falls on its face and the minor little glares from before shine brighter due to the new "challenges".

Bolt is a researcher for a lab. He stumbles upon some high tech ancient robots that he calls Tokobots. He then sets out on a quest to find out the secret behind them. Yeah, it goes a tiny bit deeper, has a some what decent twist near the end but I really just didn't care about the characters, the Tokobots or anything else in the game. It just didn't capture me.

The graphics look good enough. Everything looks like it should I guess. However, everything is really bland to look at. Yeah, it's a room but it's an empty room. A lot of rooms look the same, not a large range of textures are used and most of the rooms have nothing in them. Some do have jars and other stuff but they don't really fit with the areas. Character models are decent. The enemies aren't very varied, bosses are some what neat looking but it just looks kind of "bleh". Kind of like the Monster rancher games, they never really impressed me graphic wise.

The sound in the game is actually decent. No voice acting which kind of sucks. The music is very fun and perky. Fits the game well and sets the mood for the earlier half of it all. Sound effects are kind of boring as well. Nothing to exciting, lots of stuff doesn't make noise ect.

The control isn't that bad. It's easy to move, jump, swing, switch forms ect. The problem is the camera but that is easy enough to control, it just doesn't want to remain where you put it and in some cases can't be moved at all. I did find that near the end of the game the control took a dive for the worse and I found hit detection to be a bit off during some of the Tokobot/magnetic strip bits.

The game play in Tokobot is almost unique but at the same time it isn't. Oddly enough I finished playing the third Prince of Persia game the other day and during this game whenever something didn't go right I found myself trying to reverse time. Yeah, that is so NOT an option here... See, the game has a lot of trial and error moments and it really isn't that big of a deal until later in the game when respawn points are poorly placed, saves become fewer, more enemies and then the world's worst swing jump. But let's focus on the game play in a proper manner.

Okay, The game is kind of split into 5 or 6 areas and they kind of have 2 sections. This causes you to return to each area and go to the new area. Problem is there is no map and the game doesn't give you any clues on where to go. Not too big of a deal until the end of the game when you're forced to search the entire game for some pass codes. It's just an unfair thing to do to extend the game length.

Levels tend to be broken up into multiple paths. You go down one and hope it's the right one. If not you go back and do the other one. Why might one be wrong? because you might not have gotten the correct power up for that situation. Again, this just seems a bit unfair to the gamer and I don't want to waste my time randomly running around trying to figure out what to do. A general idea would be much better. So, you need up go around rather bland halls and rooms and you solve puzzles.

The puzzles tend to be rather weak and only gave me a problem when it required me to use a move I forgot I had. This would be the move objects thing. You use it once in the beginning and then right after the half way point you sue it again. For me that was a few months because I had stopped playing the game to play X-Men Legends 2. Other puzzles may have you just killing everything in a room or hit a switch. It's all very basic. The other problems are the jumping segments. These are tough for one reason; the camera just plain ole sucks. It hard to put Bolt in the correct place for him to do the swings which are truly horrid. If you're not aimed properly and it's a long series you may end up not making it all the way across because you can realign yourself.

The bosses in the game seem to be the biggest thing. They are large and all have a weakness that you need to figure out. Most are simple but that's because you only have 3 freaking forms. The forms are easy to switch between and it's rather easy to figure out which to sue in whatever situation that may arise. You can also transform into either a tank or a samurai robot. These work kind of well against bosses but not always. There are other transformations but you need to be standing on their symbol to sue them, I found the cannon one to be a royal pain when aiming it, They all have energy bars, some deplete on how many times you attacked or were hit or picked something up ect. All transformations use items found in the levels. There are 3 types of items. Enemies drop them, some are in boxes. It's overly easy to get them.

The replay value is moderately high in this game. Upon beating the game you unlock a time trial mode which is believed to unlock the final formation. It requires fast thinking and the ability to get hit only once during a boss fight. Besides that the game offers nothing else once it's beaten. The game took me about 6 hours to beat which is average these days. Maybe tack on another hour for my deaths.

The thing with this game is that it is kind of dull all around. It's not too exciting and it plays kind of like Pikmin meets Ape Escape, in a sense anyway. I just can't openly recommend. It's a decent game but it does have some glaring flaws and I can't help but feel like it's just very generic. There are much better platformers around on other handhelds but sadly this is the second one on the PSP and well Ape Escape was better but still flawed. here's to hoping that Daxter is great.

Story - 5/10
Graphics - 5/10
Sound - 6/10
Control - 5/10
Game Play - 7/10
Replay value - 6/10

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/06