Eledees

 Wii, Eledees (2007) game

This was my first disappointment of the year for a few reasons, partly I had expectations of it, but also it had technical issues as is often the way with Wii games: specifically the controls. Control is the most important aspect of a game as without it nothing else matters, and too often the Wii Remote is just too insensitive or oversensitive to work for precision tasks, and 'Eledees' is almost entirely about precision! It may not have helped that I played it over the summer (light streaming in from the window just behind my screen affects the sensors), but even playing on a dull day or after dark it still had problems so I can't put it down to that exclusively. This was one of the games I was looking forward to as I loved the idea of having a house in which you can move and manoeuvre every item, going from teacups up to wardrobes as you tear the place apart looking for the brilliantly named Eledees (or Ella-dees as the irritating child in the Story Mode insists on calling them!), an improvement on the original game title ('Elebits'), since: LEDs, get it? They skitter and scamper around and generally cause grief as you try to shoot them within the time limit (a light gun game with a twist - literally twisting and turning household items and appliances about!), which builds up the power of your 'Capture Gun,' in turn enabling you to lift and access heavier items, which then brings out more critters to zap, and so it goes on.

In terms of structure it's a well put together experience: you begin in just one room, then migrate to the landing, and gradually as the levels progress you have access to more and more of the house and grounds, graduating to surrounding streets and eventually the fun-size theme park or fairground. And there are a lot of levels! Twenty-nine in total, including the (unnecessary), occasional boss battle. Quadruple all the other levels to take into account four game modes in each, plus the effort to achieve a perfect 'S' Rating on each one, and you have a huge game. That's one of my problems with it: I usually love a deep, long gaming experience, but this is one that outstayed its welcome. Although it has a story (of sorts!), it's really just a puzzle game, and puzzling has never been one of my favourite genres. Also, being a bit of a completist, I aimed to get everything in the game and clocked up almost one hundred hours recorded time, and that's without counting the hours I spent repeating short challenges over and over, which the game tends not to record. There was simply too much content and eventually I had to call it a day: my obsession, once I'd cleared all the levels with the top rating, was to find all three secret Pink Eledees in each level, one of which is fairly easy to find, one is more tricky to locate, and a third only appears when a specific target or action is achieved within a level. But you're not told what...

I struggled over and over with some levels as I at least wanted to walk away from the game having succeeded at every Challenge Mode - these were the toughest parts of the game. Though deceptively simple (such as getting Eledees out of three vases in a minimal amount of time without breaking the vases - it took me a while to work out that you didn't have to turn them over to drop the creatures out, you could simply flick them up and they'd come flying out the top, which was the only possible way to succeed in the time), they were cunning and a real struggle to complete, often seeming impossible when you first tried them, but after many, many attempts you'd come across a technique that enabled success, to feelings of great satisfaction. The fact they were so short and sharp meant there was an addictive quality that kept me coming back to try again. So it was very disappointing when I couldn't unlock every Challenge (I managed eighteen), for the simple fact I couldn't find all the Pink Eledees. The game could have gone one of two ways from the start: either it would have rewarded gradually increasing skill and control to make it a great experience, or it could go the other way and become a drag, and unfortunately I felt it was the latter.

Perhaps the unexciting and unchallenging nature of the other two bonus modes, Score Attack and Eternal Missions, dragged the game down a bit - the first was simply playing the level with only five minutes time limit to see how high a score you could achieve, and the other was marginally more interesting in that you had unlimited time to play the level however you saw fit and get a huge score, hopefully locating 100% of the Eledee 'nests.' I didn't manage to do that in every level, either, and I didn't see any way to check what was my best percentage for each level, which was an annoyance as that might have made it more appealing to return to. As it was it seemed designed more for multiple players to compare top scores and I've never been into score-based gaming and didn't have anyone to compare to anyway. Eternal was interesting only because you could try out all the ideas you might have had to activate or interact with various items or machinery. It might have worked better if Eternal had been the first unlockable mode and if you'd been able to search for Pink Eledees there rather than only in the main game mode, allowing methodical, careful searching. Instead you were left to find the Pink ones within a time limit without knowing what you had to do to get them all and it turned into a frustrating experience.

I could also suggest the levels became a little boring on repetition when you essentially had to play them in a certain order to get the fastest route to maximum power and score - first go here where there are some loose Eledees, then once you've built up enough points to unlock this door you can go and get some there, then back to this part to activate such and such, which boosts your stats so you can do this... Granted, when you uncover the optimum route through a level you've made progress, but then you have to keep doing the same actions over and over in order to get the coveted 'S' Rating, or when searching for the Pinks you probably need to get to max power before reaching the required points to 'clear' the level, at the same time as not making too loud a noise or too many breakages. There are so many levels that boredom on one just means you move onto another, and there are so many options and choices of what to play that it takes a long time for the game to reach that point I mentioned of outstaying its welcome, but inevitably it does come. I had a number of levels where I was trying all I could to achieve power, avoid penalties and clear the level within a certain time in order that Pinks would appear, and yet it still didn't happen and I became more bored and frustrated as time wore on and I wished I could give it all up and move on to a new game, having played it across four months almost exclusively! That's just ridiculous, and the later levels take fifteen or twenty minutes to get through, so all that work building up to something that never happens just grinds you down to the point you don't want to play any more.

Sensible people would probably suggest taking a break and coming back at a later time, but I like to keep going while my skills are at their peak and honed to the best they're likely to be and I stubbornly refused to give up. Until I finally gave in having exhausted all ideas and become fed up with those last remaining levels where I hadn't found everything - after all, I'd completed the game, though that's not overly difficult as you just have to finish all twenty-nine levels, including the final boss fight (which is actually quite easy, other than on the wrist as you have to keep twisting to rotate screws out of a robot), and I'd got all the 'S' Ratings, but it still irks that I couldn't at least unlock and complete all the Challenges, which were the toughest and best part of the game. I haven't even touched on my biggest disappointment, however - I mentioned technical issues, and one big one is the slowdown that occurs in the later levels when you're lifting entire houses and fairground rides, and particularly when you activate a cyclone attachment for your gun and everything flies up into the air to be whirled around. But actually, that could be useful sometimes as time ticks down slower and you have more time to manoeuvre about as if you had faster reactions so that wasn't really a big problem for me. No, my disappointment came from the Edit Mode, a brilliant idea in which you could build your own layout using all the items you'd unlocked in the game!

What an idea, what potential freedom to create your own levels. Except the killer is that you can only use existing levels! I was so excited about recreating houses or buildings I knew, populating them with all kinds of suitable set dressing, and then whizzing through and causing chaos, but not being able to build even one room to your specifications entirely took the wind out of my sails and undercut a lot of enjoyment. I realise these expectations may have been too big to be realised in a game from 2007, but I was sorely disappointed and would no doubt have spent many more hours experimenting and creating in that mode. Still, it's not something I'd call a bad game as a whole, the environments while not being realistic, have a reality about them, and a fine detail down to the littlest items that's pleasing to operate, especially when you realise you can put toast in a toaster, or turn on taps or whatever. Working out how to do things is part of the fun, though it isn't always obvious and because of the troublesome controls fun can be sapped away. That's really the key beyond all the other complaints, because actions need to be so fine-tuned, like playing a steady hand game, and if you're penalised by something suddenly springing out of your grip in midair and breaking, it's deeply frustrating. That also means you can't just let loose and cause carnage, and in some levels wanton destruction even unleashes enemy Eledees that can attack you, so there can be an irritation in the tension between having the capability to destroy or let loose with your Capture Gun, and being forced to pussyfoot around.

It really is more of a technical gimmick than a proper game, expanded to game length (and beyond!), thanks to all the extras, but the core gameplay never changes and becomes very repetitive. The beautiful painterly presentation of the Story Mode can't lift the silly narrative and annoying characters and really has very little to do with playing the game, but I will say, especially early on, the gameplay is so involving it really sucked me in - I would get so intensely concentrated that my eyes would water with the strain and my hands, wrists and arms were in great discomfort from the unnatural position you had to hold the Remote and Nunchuk - it's actually a bit painful after a while, but you want to keep going at that stage, and you learn to rest at appropriate times, but it's certainly the most physically debilitating title I've played on the console! I'm not sure it's a game I'd go back to in future to try and complete the bits I didn't originally as it became such a chore to keep trying, and after striving so hard, and winning the other games I've played this year it's hard to have to give up on something in this way, but it had to be done or I could be stuck there for the rest of the year and I have plenty of other things I'd like to play!

**