I have a Wii, and that makes me very happy. However, I feel guilty because my Wii has been neglected lately for the PS2 and my new DS. I thought I’d rent a Wii game to get me playing the Wii again. I chose to rent Elebits, a ridiculously cute-looking game about little creatures that basically are electricity.

My sister was very excited about this game, so I thought I would check it out to see if it was any good. I started with the tutorial, because I had no manual and I knew almost nothing about the game. I wasn’t in much of a hurry, but I found myself getting aggravated easily by the tutorial. It just kept going and going. I spent nearly half an hour on that thing and I had barely done anything. I still didn’t know what the objective of the game was by the time the tutorial was over.

I was wondering if it I was just impatient, but I had my sister play the tutorial as well. Even though there are options to skip the sections of the tutorial, it’s really hard to know what’s important and what’s not. My sister agreed with many of my frustrations, complaining, “it was just too long” and “you could figure out a lot of these things just by playing.”

After the unnecessarily long tutorial, playing a new game triggers an opening cutscene. It’s pretty much like watching a camera pan across drawings in a children’s book – something I’d expect to see on Reading Rainbow. Unfortunately, the voiceover is terrible and sounds nothing like a real child (unless he has severe allergies).

The game is structured a bit like Katamari Damacy, where you have a set time to pick up a bunch of objects in a room. Unlike Katamari, however, you are looking for a specific type of object (elebits) and your perspective does not change throughout the level. Your gun can gradually pick up bigger and bigger objects.

If I had to summarize the gameplay in one sentence, it would be “You tear apart a bunch of rooms in your house so you can scare out some little critters and pick them up with a big gun.” While it is amusing to virtually ransack a room, the fact that I’m not an 8-year child with a temper tantrum takes away some of the novelty. The game itself is very cute, especially as the elebits make some adorable squeaking and mewing sounds. However, the gameplay itself is not that compelling, so I felt like I had experienced most of the game in an hour.

While I do appreciate cute games with great themes and innovative design, I find that Elebits is one of those games that’s good to play – once. The idea of collecting creatures to power appliances is very fun. The gun that allows you to pick up objects is a neat tool, but some of the physics were a bit unrefined (like how it was difficult to pull open a door without it shutting again from your force). I’m glad I rented Elebits, but I think my time is better spent on other games.