Thank the mighty gaming gods that there are some publishers and developers out there still willing to take a gamble on releasing quirky and original titles that, let's face it, simply aren't as prevalent as they used to be in the current era of big-budget development costs and mainstream demand for first-person shooters, new Maddens and never-ending franchises. Nintendo has never been one to follow the mainstream though, and their push to reinvigorate the industry with innovation and original properties continues with the release of Japanese developer Skips' adorably weird GameCube adventure, Chibi-Robo. Matching Katamari Damacy stride for stride in both bizarre humour and toy-like appeal (although the games are completely different in terms of gameplay), Chibi-Robo is an astronomically charming adventure/platformer that every gamer needs to open their hearts and minds to.

In Chibi-Robo you take control of a cute, four-inch-tall toy/helper-robot named, well…Chibi-Robo of course! As the game opens, the Sanderson family is sitting down for a happy birthday celebration. It is Jenny's eighth birthday, you see, and her parents put aside the family's current struggles to make sure she has a good time. During the gift-giving portion of the celebration, Mr. Sanderson surprises Jenny with a very special (and expensive) gift, a toy robotic helper named Chibi-Robo. With Mr. Sanderson currently unemployed and Mrs. Sanderson stressed over housework and the family's finances, rest assured Mrs. Sanderson is not happy about the pricey gift, and thusly takes to locking herself in her room to get away from her strange daughter who thinks she's a frog, and her lazy, toy-obsessed husband.

Amidst this major family dysfunction it is your job as Chibi-Robo to keep the family happy by helping with chores around the house, completing odd fetch jobs and lending general support to each member of the family during an extremely trying time. On your adventure throughout the Sanderson home, you'll navigate Chibi-Robo through the usual household environments, from the foyer, living room and kitchen to the basement, bedroom and backyard, and encounter a cast of some of the most bizarre and memorable living toys ever dreamed up. Like the Toy Story animated films, the toys in this game world come to life when the humans aren't around, and Chibi-Robo winds up meeting and helping numerous quirky toy pals in his new home. There is an army of egg soldiers known as the Free Rangers guarding the foyer, who initially see poor Chibi as an enemy, in addition to a drunken wood pirate named Captain Plankbeard, a Buzz Lightyear superhero action-figure-type in Space Hunter Drake Redcrest, a Lego T-Rex named Dinah, Chibi-Robo's hilarious hovering TV assistant Telly Vision and more.

While roaming the Sanderson abode there is no shortage of tasks for you to undertake. As a helper robot first and foremost, Chibi-Robo spends most of his days cleaning stains off the floors and walls, picking up and disposing of trash and cleaning up toys, while Mrs. Sanderson boycotts her usual housework duties. To get these tasks done, Chibi-Robo has all sorts of nifty household tools to find and put to good use. A toothbrush, for example, becomes Chibi's floor scrubber, while a spoon becomes his shovel. He also eventually discovers a mug to hide under as a shield and a squirter syringe for spraying liquids.

Since Chibi-Robo is a battery-operated toy, there are limitations to work around that can be a smidge off-putting at first. Performing actions and simply walking around drain Chibi-Robo's battery power, causing him to shutdown when the battery runs out completely. To keep this from happening, Chibi-Robo must plug himself into nearby outlets to recharge his battery once it starts to get low. In the early stages of the game the maximum battery capacity is very low and the flow of the gameplay suffers, since you always have to stop what you're doing to find an outlet. Fortunately, this problem doesn't take long to become remedied; by completing jobs and making family members and other toys happy, Chibi-Robo earns Happy Points that are put towards his Chibi-Ranking. At set intervals of earned Happy Points, Chibi-Robo is rewarded with extended battery power, so by the time you've played a couple of hours you've amassed enough juice to carrying on for long stretches without constantly needing to recharge.

Another early annoyance that initially slows things down is the day/night cycle. The game is set up in a way that has you playing in short alternating sessions between the daytime and nighttime, and in between each session Chibi-Robo is forced to return to his home base, the Chibi-House, to calculate his ranking during that stretch of time. Early on these play sessions are only five minutes each, so just when you get started doing something you are automatically stopped and taken back to the Chibi-House, which also means you'll then have to backtrack to where you left off to finish the task. This is compounded by the fact that Chibi-Robo is a small robot who takes some time to manoeuvre through such a massive surrounding environment. As with the early limitations on battery power, this issue becomes an easy fix once you're able to buy timers that enable you to increase these sessions up to 10 or 15 minutes, which is more than enough time to complete a variety of goals without interruption. I won't lie here folks. The first two hours or so can be somewhat tedious to get through, but trust me, this is one of those games that takes some time to get going, and once it does, its true brilliance shines through. Though a factor that slightly detracts from the game as a whole, Chibi-Robo's slow first couple of hours becomes a moot point when put up against the subsequent long remaining hours of enjoyment; you'll need at least 15 hours to see most of what the game has to offer, but in actuality Chibi-Robo has virtually endless replay value.

What Chibi-Robo does extremely well with its lengthy runtime is provide a vast diversity of activities. In addition to the cleaning chores, Chibi-Robo has much more to do. Over the course of the game you'll do everything and beyond: you'll race a toy hotrod in a game of chicken, fly a toy spacecraft in target-shooting runs, compete in Free Ranger time-based training challenges, help cook a batch of hamburgers for dinner with Chibi's trusty spoon as a spatula, plant seeds and watch flowers bloom over time, help frogs perform a ritual rain dance, rescue a damsel in distress high atop a toy castle, patrol the living room with Drake Redcrest, explore the depths of the kitchen sink in pursuit of Mr. Sanderson's wedding ring, and much more. There is something new to see or do every step of the way and things never get boring or repetitive.

Moolah is also earned and collected throughout the game, for Chibi-Robo to spend on upgrades and items at the online store on his Chibi-PC back at home base. Upgrades include gear such as the Chibi-Copter, which enables Chibi to hover over gaps and float down from high ledges, and the Chibi-Blaster, a blaster gun attachment for Chibi's arm that he can shoot to break certain objects or to battle the nasty Spydorz enemy robots that attack from time to time. Destroying Spydorz also nets Chibi-Robo Scrap, which is then used at the Chibi-House's Recyclotron to craft Utilibots; these are handy navigational tools that come in three types - ladder, bridge and warp - and make certain areas of the environments much easier to reach. Additionally, Chibi-Robo gains various costumes to change in and out of to further aid his cause, from a pair of pyjamas that allows you to jump ahead to the next day or night cycle to a frog suit that grants Chibi-Robo the ability to hear what animals and Jenny (who always speaks in ribbits like a frog) are saying. About the only thing Chibi-Robo can't do that I wish he could do, is manually jump.

Yet another aspect of Chibi-Robo that I love is its open progression and stellar level design and scale. There are no objectives that you are forced to complete in any sort of order. Instead, as you advance through the story, sections of the house open up and events seem to happen at random. While some may see this as a lack of direction, it actually opens the game up to being completed differently each time you play through. The exact same thing can also be said about the fantastic level design, as it relates to the accurate scale of Chibi-Robo's world. The immense size of the house conveys the perfect sense of what the daily life of a toy robot in the human world would be like. It's such fun to get around by using things like dangling shoestrings, drawer knobs, fallen books and lampposts. Best of all, the ingenious layout of these items creates a natural feel to the world that is always hiding some secret area you missed the first time around.

After looking at screenshots, I'm sure the majority of gamers will cast this game aside due to its dated graphics (and with blocky character models and low-res textures, there's no arguing that the visuals are dated, technically speaking). However, you have to look at the spirit of the game and what it is trying to achieve. Chibi-Robo is purposefully presented in a goofy manner and, just like Katamari Damacy, the odd style lends the game a toy-like charm and appeal that wouldn't have been pulled off as well with hyper-detailed textures and polished character models. As much as I love the visual style, I must say that the audio is even better; every action Chibi-Robo performs is accompanied by a melodic tone that further accentuates the toyish atmosphere. For instance, while scrubbing stains with a toothbrush, a guitar or banjo gently strums to the scrubs. Similarly, piano notes sound while digging hole with the spoon and even basic actions such as walking and climbing are aurally supplemented with cute chimes and squeaks. Also brilliant and gut-bustingly hilarious at the same time is the game's voice dialogue. Every line of dialogue is backed by a spoken language of gibberish that will have you scratching your head at first and falling over in your lazy boy laughing like crazy once the bizarre nature of it all settles in. You could almost compare it to some of the dialogue in killer7, although it is obviously much more adorable and light hearted in Chibi-Robo.

Being so completely different compared to almost any videogame currently on the market for any platform (I like to think of the game as Katamari Damacy-meets-Toy Story), Chibi-Robo offers an experience that you'll have to play to decide whether you'll like it or not. It has its share of quirks that do frustrate from time to time, but in the end the sheer charm, originality and fun-factor that Chibi-Robo exudes are uplifting enough to easily earn it my stamp of approval. Chibi-Robo is an imaginative robotic adventure that no GameCube owner should go without playing - after all, it's original, entertaining and unusual games like this that set Nintendo's Cube aside from its competitors.

Reviewed by Matt Litten for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).