A child-friendly first person shooter, Elebits is a unique game with an interesting game mechanic. You control a "capture gun," that can carry and throw objects to reveal hidden creatures called "Elebits". By shooting Elebits, you charge up your gun which allows you to pick up heavier objects to find more Elebits. The game has a robust, yet slightly unrealistic physics engine (picture catching butterflies in G-mod) and an excellently customizable level editor. This game is plagued with overly-long / tedious missions, lack of variation, lackluster graphics, and some slowdown, but is still pretty damn good. Multiplayer is frantic and exciting, but unbalanced. Called Eledees in Europe.

Good:

Really charming arcade shooter. Being able to throw objects all over is pleasing and shooting the little edafos is cathartic.

Not Good:

Has impactful performance issues.

Verdict:

Solid game that could lend itself to sequels (will not happen :( ). 8 / 10

the early days of basically any console ever are very experimental, with most launch titles being more or less tech demos for whatever the hardware was, and i dont think ive seen any more experimental launch era than the wii. with the gamecube apparently not being that much of a success, itd take a little more than just familiar titles to draw an audience, and the motion control gimmick opened the floodgates for a ton of games that practically assumed kids would flock to them for the controls alone. i remember for a LONG time my parents would start up a game like smash bros and immediately point the control at the screen and be disappointed that it didnt work because the wii had basically been known as the "motion controls console". nowadays, the wii has become kinda infamous for just how much "shovelware" made it on, games that thought that just being able to point at the screen and move things was enough, and they were never gonna compete with the aaa backed games that barely even used motion controls at all like smash bros or mario galaxy. but i think i realized that all these gimmicky shovelware games werent trying specifically to be like mario galaxy or anything like that, but they were trying to be one game maybe without knowing it: elebits.

elebits was a launch title for the wii, and id says that it's the quintessential wii launch title in a lot of ways. it's a light gun shooter, and while home console light gun shooters had been done before, there was some novelty in just being able to play one with a small all-purpose controller rather than needing an entire peripheral for it. more than that however, it was a physics based light gun shooter, one focused on flicking your wrist around to move objects and THEN point at ai with your controller. it's very much the kind of game youd give to a 10 year old to show them what a motion controlled console is capable of, just putting the player in a big sandbox and letting them manipulate everything with a little pointer.

if there's any game this game reminds me of, it's katamari, but not just because of its similar progression style of starting out moving small objects around before progressing to bigger ones, or its adorable creature designs, or even its fanastic soundtrack. no, what really gives it that katamari vibe to me is how simultaneously serene and DESTRUCTIVE this game is. the entire game is just you flinging junk, light posts, trees, and even entire buildings around and yet it never ends up feeling like anything you do is with malicious intent because you're rarely punished for just making a huge mess. there are levels where you arent allowed to break anything or make too much noise, and there are unique enemies that spawn in high concentrations of junk, but things will still be strung around cattywompus because thats just the goal of the game, to move around stuff and find more elebits, not to act orderly. moreover, it's CATHARTIC to be able to lift entire cars or homes to zap up more elebits scurrying underneath. a lot of players have an innate desire to live out a power fantasy of destruction, especially among younger players, and elebits being an entire sandbox with an end goal makes tearing apart the town addicting since there's an added layer of going on a scavenger hunt instead of just destruction for the sake of it. heck, the very first level involves making a mess out of a young boys bedroom, something young children are trained not to do, and yet the game encourages the player to do so without guilt.

also the sound design! it's just an AORABLE and cozy little game, with a really nice soundtrack accompanied by the wails and squeaks of elebits. just hearing an elbit go "burmy!" as i zapped it was a little reward of its own.

all in all, elebits is the kind of game that reminds me of the charm of low stakes games intended for younger audiences. elebits is a wonky game sure, and it isnt very long, but it isnt really the kind of game to be dissected critically among other video games. its just, a really sweet little game that makes me happy, and i cant really ask for more than that.

+it's first-person physics puzzler katamari, which an insanely bold concept on wii, and it's pulled off with relative aplomb. the goal is to capture elebits to charge up your gravity gun, which in turn can activate devices that spit out special elebits which increase the size of objects that you can move around to reveal more elebits. you're allowed to make such a mess turning rooms upside down searching for elebits, and by end game you can pick up some seriously large structures and toss them around easily.
+gorgeous hand-drawn art that's like trembling thin-line characters on top of a pulsating watercolor background. it's the main style used in the cutscenes and looks amazing
+in the latter half of the game there's no map repetition, which surprised me quite a bit. there are objects that reappear frequently, but as far as I'm aware basically every map past the house is unique. especially impressive given that there's 25 main missions.
+bosses are as solid as you could possibly get given the premise, and I didn't find any of them to be aggravating or dull. each one has a separate gimmick and strategy as well.
+there's plenty of content here, with a multiplayer mode where multiple people can compete to see who gets the most elebits, and an edit mode where you can make your own maps. I didn't dive into much of the extraneous content, but the game still took me a little over 9 hours to beat regardless, which was much longer than I was expecting (though that's including all my retries and such).
+being able to stand on your tiptoes or crouch is such a smart addition. initially I didn't think much of it, but I found it to be of great use later on.
+the game swarms you with temporary upgrades throughout the levels, and virtually all of them are useful. homing lasers especially are a must-have in the late-game
+I was initially worried about the turrets throughout the game that shoot at you, because it's not always apparent when you're being fired upon, and it's easy to get momentarily stuck on surrounding objects and not be able to dodge. thankfully their shots move very slowly and you can duck under them as well, making these much less of an issue than anticipated.
+absolute banger jungle/house soundtrack that flirts with salsa, big band, and other influences throughout. sometimes the MIDI-ness of the tracks is a little overly apparently, but there are def tracks that made me stop listening to a podcast in the background just so I could enjoy them. I'll just drop a little sampling right here, here,here, here, and here

-the framerate is never amazing and in the bigger end-game areas it really struggles to keep pace. not as annoying when you're just wildly wrecking havoc and picking up stray elebits, but very annoying when you're trying to do something precise
-the basic gun and movement controls are great but advanced techniques like turning handles, rotating objects, and pulling items towards you are frustrating, especially if you play this sitting down like I did. the wiimote is simply not accurate enough to facilitate these techniques, though at least they aren't necessary often
-elebits vary in how many watts they give you depending on their mood, and if they see you/know you're trying to catch them they get agitated and yield less watts. in theory this is interesting, but the implementation is so haphazard that it becomes a major nuisance. elebits across the map can somehow know where you are while elebits less than a meter from you will blissfully prance unaware of your presence.
-to use items you have to break them by smashing them against a surface, and I never felt like this was consistent. it's especially annoying when they bounce against the surface instead and go flying off.
-certain contraptions have more obtuse requirements for opening them once powered, which usually isn't a big deal since there are plenty of these throughout each level. some early stages (especially the kitchen) had me struggling to figure out how to operate these but ultimately moving on. however, mission 27 had me in conniptions for a bit because suddenly operating each machine is mandatory to power up the gun enough to win, and these puzzles made little-to-no sense to me. it's not intuitive for me to operate a map kiosk by putting a plastic rabbit on top of it...
-early game has a lot of repeated areas since you're within your house for each mission. it makes sense in context, but you spend so much time in the living room... there could've been more variety for sure.

I liked this game quite a bit, especially during the middle section where the levels opened up a bit and I felt like I could go a little crazy in each mission. what keeps this overall concept from being better is the paucity of elebits at times. in katamari, the main drive is to collect as much as possible and always keep picking up items, and it accomplishes that with items being everywhere conceivable. in this game, the mission pacing is much more choppy, and there are points in many missions where it feels like you're trying to squeeze blood from a stone scrounging up elebits to unlock a new contraption. that feeling of not being able to bulk up your wattage or gun power while the clock is ticking down makes my shoulders tense, and it kept me from wanting the do the bare minimum to clear each level. for the most part I'd exit the level as soon as my wattage hit the required amount instead of continuing to build my rank, and that feeling of not wanting to pursue more with the game caps how high I can rank it at the end of the day. it's flawed for sure, but it gets so much right in other ways that I can't help but feel a lot of affection for it, especially since it's a game I remember clearly from my childhood.

Interesting game. NGL I've always been interested in this game solely on just how nice the box art looked and had no idea what the actual game was about or how it played, so I'm happy to actually have seen what's behind that beautiful cover.

It's an FPS type thing where you use the wii pointer to aim and blast these little sprite-y dudes called elebits in order to capture em. Levels are set on a timer where there's a point quota that ya gotta meet and different elebits are worth different amounts of points. The main gimmick though, is that the elebits are hiding in various places and your gun happens to double as a phys/gravity gun that can freely lift and move all sorts of things. There are also specific elebits that level up your gun and allow you to manipulate heavier and heavier things, and every level pretty much ends up looking like a tornado went through it. There's a very visceral energy to playing this, just saying "fuck this tree" or whatever as you launch it into the stratosphere, or just ripping drawers out of desks and smashing through full closets looking for more mfers to blast. That being said though, this is a launch-window wii game that tries to deal with hundreds of dynamic physics items onscreen at once, and that much processing brings the wii down to its kniis as it struggles to keep any semblance of a smooth framerate going. The chunky FPS plus the fact that the sensitive pointer controls move the camera all around from all the shooting makes the game certainly a bit dizzying to play in long bursts. The later half of playing levels can also be a bit difficult to move around in thanks to all the shit that's thrown on the floor and the levels where you have to worry about not making noise/breaking certain things certainly add variety but feel antithetical to the games primal "fuck everything in this room up" vibe that the gameplay goes for. If anything, I wish this concept would be done again on modern hardware, especially in VR, as doofy make-a-mess-with-physics games are always popular there and the hardware can actually power it this time. Too bad konami isn't interested in doing anything cool anymore...

It's just some dumb mindless fun. If I had this game back in the day as a kid I probably would have enjoyed just throwing everything around, framerate be damned. Certainly worth a play, though you'd probably get a better experience playing this on an emulator or something where the game would run smoother and have widescreen. The OST is done by konami's A-team, with Bemani and Castlevania people working on it and it owns. There are even plenty of fun konami references strewn about, like how the arcades have real modeled bemani arcade machines (but no DDR cabs :C) and the creepy bunny thing from silent hill as the mascot of the amusement park levels (which I haven't played any silent hill games, but isn't that like not a good character to be a kids mascot?). The in-game visuals are pretty just existent for a wii game, but the key art and cutscene art is absolutely wonderfully drawn with an excellent dream-like use of color and lighting, like I said before the artwork was literally what drew me to the game in the first place. With how wholesome and pleasant that artwork looks, I sure bet the main artist went on to become famous for other absolutely pleasant and wholesome things!

Very cute game that uniquely takes the first-person shooting genre and makes it entirely non-violent! Very, very short in story - but has fun multiplayer aspects that keeps you from tiring from it too quickly. Controls to spin can get a bit nauseating though, so watch out.

It's absolutely hilarious using the Wii Zapper for this thing, too.

3/5

The Perfect Wii Game. A lot of overly ambitious wii games try to make motion controls the whole deal, in my humble opinion, there are only a few games that manage to do that well, and this is one of them. The whole idea of this game is hard to describe, a bunch of cute critters being in charge of all electricity get weird and you gotta capture them! I dunno mostly I am enthralled by the way this game handles physics. You get a gravity gun and are told to go totally wild, turn on stuff, rip clocks off of walls, throw toast into toasters, try not to make too much noise, please don’t break the plates, it’s so chaotic but so well realized. The slight delay between your beam and your controller does wonders for the actual controls of the game, and catching little guys to get stronger and become able to lift that fridge to get the little dudes under it! I guess i am mostly just gushing at this point, if you don’t check out this game, at least check out the soundtrack because it is stellar.

Also the rabbit from silent hill is in it.

an obscure early wii title from capcom, elebits is nuts, it's kind of pikmin, kind of katamari, kind of half-life

a wicked light gun title, and a surprising tech showcase for the Wii, all the objects you can send flying around, it's incredibly impressive

unfortunately, once the levels leave the house, the framerate absolutely tanks, the levels remain really solid, but it is a very noticeable blunder

nonetheless, i'd check this out, as it's probably quite cheap

(This is part of a series of party game reviews for party games that I messed around with alongside a good friend in a weekend. I'm writing them with time inbetween each review to avoid flooding so I can still have friends after this.)

Elebits was another one of the party games I selected ahead of time as prepwork for a packed weekend of multiplayer games with a close friend. The multiplayer session we had was... kind of a mess though. Objects flew around the room like the Tazmanian Devil had stumbled upon an abode, lasers and Elebits made the screen look quite busy aside from the already scattered objects tanking the frame rate, and both of us were constantly pointing out how strange the camera combined with the just slightly off point lasers felt. But Elebits looked and sounded like such an interesting concept, so I wasn't content with this being the end-all of my experience, and I took another look by myself today.

I'm going to defer to Pangburn's review for most of the mechanical explanations (I actually didn't know he had played and reviewed this til I brought the page up again, whoops!), but needless to say, it's a super cool and innovative concept with very cute objects and creatures. I think packing the tutorial all in one go as an offered optional precondition before starting the story is a bit of a mistake, and I think it's possible for the devs to have started a bit more slowly and eased in the instructions and introductions as you progressed early levels. Otherwise, the package label is exactly what you get; it's a really bold take with the Wii motion controls, and I'm surprised how quickly I got used to the experience once I knew what I was doing (which I most definitely did not when playing it cold in multiplayer with my friend). I do have a few nitpicks that I think could improve the experience though:

- The camera often panned to angles where I could temporarily see through walls and notice where other Elebits were hiding. This is a pretty minor complaint considering it's probably a product of its age, but if Elebits ever gets a remaster/remake, I do hope this gets tackled.

- The gravity gun capture isn't angled as a straight line from the reticle directly into the background (i.e. not necessarily parallel with and perpendicular with the walls and the floor, like how you'd expect a light gun shooter to work), so the laser isn't always pinpoint on the reticle. This took some time to get used to and fortunately is somewhat alleviated because you can just wiggle the reticle around til you snag your intended object, but as mentioned before, it is a learning curve.

- Too often I found myself snagging onto bigger objects (many of which couldn't be moved) when I was trying to capture the smaller Elebits. This probably could be fixed if you could also hold a button on the Wii Remote that would switch on a mode that would bypass picking objects with gravity and exclusively focused on capturing Elebits.

I'm probably putting down Elebits for now, but I'm intrigued enough to where I want to give this game another proper go in co-op when my friends and I have another big meet up planned in a couple of months. I think Elebits definitely passes the "interesting" test, and I can't wait to give this gem another shot with the actual wherewithal to progress smoothly.