It seems an interesting choice that Nintendo would choose the little known Chibi Robo to spearhead a new title on the 3DS when there’s a plethora of more well established waiting at the side-lines. Even stranger that Nintendo would take this new title in a completely different direction to its roots. The original Chibi Robo adventure had the player navigating the cute little robot around a domestic house, completing chores and tasks for a suburban family. This time around, Chibi Robo is not confined to a domestic home but instead travels across different continents in the hopes of stopping of an alien invasion. Along the way Chibi must rescue other robots, defeat bosses and pick-up garbage to keep the world clean.

The story is rather silly, but the game’s visuals compliment it nicely. Lots of a bright colours and squeaky-voiced characters are crammed into the game’s rather bizarre world. Much to my surprise also, I found that the game has a very good sense of humour, firing off a lot of jokes that really hit the mark. The graphics aren’t particularly stunning but they do the job, they’re bright, colourful and easy on the eyes. They’re not the worst I’ve seen on the system, but the 3DS is capable of so much more.

The easiest way to sum up the game is that it plays like a cross between Yoshi’s Island and Bionic Commando. Two platformers that are stylistically worlds apart but share a lot of core gameplay elements. Each level has a set amount of collectables and cute enemies to subdue (a la Yoshi), alongside intricate and precise platforming by way of an extendable plug (Like the Bionic appendage of the Commando). There’s also a number of bosses to defeat like giant robotic rabbits and alien motherships. All of the bosses are well designed, but are generally quite easy to defeat.