Dylan’s Blog

Posted by Dylan on March 17th, 2009

There is a small trend that you may have and I certainly have noticed over my past reviews and that’s that I only review good games. This is probably because when I buy a game I do it because I’ve done my research and thought it was a good game, and in the end I was right. Eledees is a game that didn’t follow this case.

I’m rather confused about Eledees actually, my friend loved it and we played it every time he came over and we had great fun. However, when I’m sitting on the couch by myself I can’t get myself motivated. So I figured that this review would really help me understand why.

To start with the bad, it isn’t particularly inventive. It’s a cross between a simulator designed to trash your house and hide in seek where every now and again some little black spiky thing runs at you and stabs you in the eyes. In all fairness it does have somethings that you would never be able to accomplish in real life like zero-gravity but it feels rather fake considering zero-gravity doesn’t affect you, or the ability to pick up buildings. But where you can pick up buildings, your main character was born with this mysterious physical defeciency where he is unable to lift anything heavier than a flashlight and his own thick skull so he uses a ‘capture gun’ which can also coincidentally pick up objects. You can power it up to lift heavier objects but at the lowest level this can result in being unable to open drawers or lift toasters. You use this capture gun to capture Eledees which powers up the house, which can be used to power toys which can upgrade the gun through power Eledees or even operate doors. It is in a seperate dimension, but last I checked doors were mechanical and didn’t need 2400 watts of electricity to operate. There is also some person who goes around the house not only cleaning up after you but setting up certain items to make the levels. Now this might somehow make sense in the house but once they start replacing hot air balloons, giant lego pieces, rocket ships and re-establishing buildings in a matter of minutes as you navigate through the menu I started raising an eyebrow. Also, there are some stupid objectives you sometimes have to maintain or else you fail, like you can’t make x amount of noise at once, you can’t break x amount of items, etc. which seem fairly pointless considering nobody is even around and once you break all their china they suddenly realise that you are wrecking the house and come storming back in to tell you to stop.

The storyline is that you are a small boy who doesn’t have enough attention paid to from his parents, because they are scientists. This is in an alternate world where electricity is powered by pint-sized creatures, but one night the power went off, and his parents buggered off to figure out why. The boy decided that he wanted power back and to find his parents so weilding the capture gun he trecks off. Now I got to the point where I figured out why the eledees rebelled, but it was a while ago so I don’t remember. I remember they were gathering for something but I don’t give a flying hoot about the storyline anyways.

To talk about the good things they have pretty fun levels. There is some cool concepts, like a firing range, abandoned city and a carnival, and more, but they all are pretty fun. There is also some moments where you get maximum power and just throw everything apart to find the last 5 eledees to finish the level with 15 seconds left, and you tear apart the terrain to make a battleground of chaos. Although the multiplayer is unflattering, it is fun to play single-player with friends by taking turns. There are also some cool powerups that allow you to unleash hell on Eledees. The controls are fluent and intuitive and, it has a level editor.

To sum it up, Eledees was mediocre. It seemed surreal, but not the kind of surreal where you go “Woah, crap!” in dead space but the kind of surreal where you go “Huh? Crap…” if you catch my drift. It brings the question whether something is surreal in a realistic way and something that just seems fake. In reality, Half-life seems very fake, but it’s and air of predictability that it has to it. You understand that if you shoot it, it will stop moving, and if you throw something, it will fall. Eledees had floaty physics, the creatures themselves did things that would be impossible in our world, and the levels seem impractical. However, in it’s defense, it was just fun, but didn’t really compell you to play it again.