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A bit slow paced, but worth every penny!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: October 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I picked up this game with low expectations, after having seen some in-game pictures from awhile back and video footage. The environments looked quite dull and ornery, and the entire concept seemed a bit unappealing (Exactly how appealing can a game where you run around as a tiny robot watering flowers get?). Once I began to play and experiment however, my mind was changed.

On the outside, the concept may appear simple - take control of Chibi Robo and help the environment by cleaning up a park... it isn't until you get about 5 or 6 hours in that you see the level of depth presented in this excellent addition to the Chibi Robo series. The main premise involves watering flowers (which takes a matter of 5 seconds), and once they grow, dancing by whipping out your beatbox and circling in time to the music with your stylus, which in turn helps the flowers produce more seeds. The better you dance, the more seeds will be produced. An in-game counter keeps track of how many flowers you've planted, and within certain increments, you'll occasionally be awarded with new gear to place and interact with in your park.

There are tons of upgrades, vehicles, items, and a slew of unique characters who'll assist you in construction in your park in return for some watts. Watts serve as the main currency and enery level in Park Patrol. You'll earn watts by completing certain tasks, interacting with objects, and most importantly, growing flowers. As you labor through daily tasks, your energy (watts) will slowly be drained, and you'll occasionally need to head back to your base to get a quick charge. Reach 0 watts, however, and you're in trouble.

This game is not without its downfalls, however. At times, the pace is very slow, especially during conversations you've heard over 30 times. Ontop of that, most of these conversations and cut scenes are mandatory - you can't tap a button and skip it. The humor is appealing at first, but after reading the same joke over and over, it gets a bit dull. Another hindering problem Park Patrol suffers from is an occasionally awkward camera. At times, the camera seems to make its own decision on where it's moving next. This is remedied by a small camera icon on the bottom screen you can touch to align the camera to Chibi Robo's line of sight, but during a high speed chase as you try to destroy predators from corrupting your flowers, you don't have much time to repeatedly press the camera button.

Overall, Park Patrol is an astoundingly addictive and interesting game. I completed Park Patrol in just a bit under 18 hours, and there's plenty of replay value, as you can continue renovating your park well after completion. I just couldn't seem to put this game down, so a warning: if you decide to pick it (which you should), you may just be losing a bit of sleep at night.

A relaxing game for those with plenty of time on their hands.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got this game because of the raves on Gamespot and Nintendo. It features Chibi Robo from the GameCube game of the same name. As its predecessor, the main character is Chibi-Robo who's just 4" tall. This model was designed to save the planet from pollution by planting flowers and creating gardens. He is helped by friends he meets near the derelict park he is tasked to transform into a beautiful garden. They are as tiny and mighty as he is; some of them need something from Chibi before they will help him, and some are just grateful Chibi revived them from the Zapow attack of Sgt. Smoggler (one of the evil villains in this world who also sends smoglings to destroy the flowers Chibi succeeds in growing).

The game itself is simple, and a little child who can read can play it. You will need a lot -- as in a LOT -- of patience and time to get through the whole game. The beginning stages are particularly frustrating because you can never do more than plant and grow one flower before you totally run out of battery and have to run back to your little Chibi-House to recharge. The day also seemed to end faster in the first few stages. I was in day 8 before I qualified to get a battery upgrade. Or maybe that's just me trying to familiarize myself with the controls. The game uses the stylus almost exclusively. The downside is that it keeps waiting for you to "touch" the touch screen before the dialogue (or anything much else) proceeds further. It gets to be tedious when Chet keeps asking if you want to convert your happy points into watts and recharge. There should be a default feature/option where you can just set your response to an automatic "yes" whenever Chibi enters the Chibi-House or to "only when prompted" which is currently the case. If you don't want to ruin pixels on your touch screen because you keep tapping it to make the dialogue go faster, you can alternatively use the "B" or "down +" buttons whenever the word "touch" appears on the touch screen. This works well for repetitive conversations that you'd rather not read again. The only times you have to tap the screen is when there's a big exclamation point on it, which usually means a decisive action is needed from Chibi-Robo.

Other than these minor setbacks, the game is good. I rated the fun factor 3 stars because this is definitely not for kids who want fast-paced, nonstop action or quick results. It's a game designed to be played at your leisure when you totally don't have anything to do and don't want to feel frantic, harried or stressed, nor overloaded with adrenaline from playing other fast-paced action games. Since the game gets off to a slow start, you won't see results immediately; you need a couple of hours' playing before you can actually feel you're making progress. The slow start makes it easy for some to think it's not worth playing at all. But as with growing real-time and real-world flowers, with patience and effort the game will eventually yield dividends of pleasure.

Chibi-Robo saves the world one flower at a time

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is just as good as the first one. You play the game as a little robot called Chibi-Robo who was built to help clean up parks around the world. your job is to plant flowers and make the park a pretty place so people will come to visit. This time there are a lot of great mini games that really use the touch pad on the DS well. There are characters that actually help you with your job. There are also bad guys who try and stop your progress. There are a lot of places to wander around, different side quests and side stories. This game is great for all ages. Just like the first game it has a great message; cleaning up, planting flowers, and helping people out makes everyone happy, happy, happy.

The game lets you upgrade and personalize your park. You get to upgrade yourself to a certain extent. It really lets you take control. The characters in this game are great and their side stories allow you to spend time away from the main goal of the game. There is even one character from the last game back to help you.

If you loved the first one you will love this one.

I could not put this game down. In fact, there were nights were the only reason I stopped was because my hand started cramping after about 4 hours of play. Even after you complete the story in the game there is endless game play. I have still not stopped playing it. It is an addictive game just like the original one.Chibi Robo

An inferior sequel that is still fun to play

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The original Chibi Robo was perhaps the best original game for GameCube and an outstanding example of its genre (not that anyone noticed). It was such a sleeper title that I was surprised it got a sequel at all. The sequel is welcome but it departs from the formula and introduces new elements while at the same time not correcting the flaws of the original.

Let's get the bad parts out of the way. For one, Park Patrol is plagued with repetition. You will be forced to see the same animations and dialog over and over. The repetition in the Chibi House is sort of a hallmark of the series and serves to center the action, but watching the same loops of your friends going out to work on the park, etc gets old fast. The control takes a while to get used to and it can be tiring to hold the DS in one hand and the stylus in the other while manipulating the d-pad and shoulder buttons to boot. The L and R buttons modify some actions but this scheme does not work well and is not very useful anyways. The control and interesting camera-centering together made killing my first Smoglings almost impossible, although by the end I was mowing them down like nothing. The pacing is as generous as the first game, building very slowly to the extent that it can be a little boring. It picks up the more tools, toys, and vehicles you get.

The graphics are good for a DS game. Screenshots of the game make it look much worse than it does. The art design is true to the original, and the toys have as much charm as in the first game (although there are no characters that are as attractive to interact with as the family in the original). The park is almost intimidatingly big at first and I admit that I was only half-done greening it up when the story ended. it is fun to play the different mini games associated with the park structures, but they're only good for a few tries. The town seems big at first but has a limited range of activities to do. The incidental objects you can find seem thrown in, and only the tennis ball and paper airplane offer any enjoyment.

The main aim of the game is to build your park, fix the toys, and defeat Miasmo and his henchmen. None of these activities are that fun at first. Like Chibi Robo, the game builds slowly, but it is more reliant on repeating the same tasks as they get more complicated, rather than adventuring to discover new things. I had a lot more fun as I played longer but I don't think I would have had the patience if I hadn't played and loved the original. I was mad when the story ended before I was ready for it, something that happened in the original too but was less expected and appreciated in Park Patrol. There were still a lot of things I wanted to accomplish at the end but with the story over I lost interest.

I am glad they made Park Patrol but it is not as good as it could have been. Still, it is worth a play and if it gets people to revisit the original then so be it.

A final note: Who decided to release this as a WalMart-only game? It just makes an under the radar title harder to find and enjoy.

I was disappointed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed the Chibi Robo game on Gamecube, and when I heard I could play with that tiny little robot again I was excited! The game is okay, and new comers to the series or die hard fanatics may get more mileage out of it than I did. I played through 19 game days (to give perspective on how much or little time I spent with the game. I think it amounted to a few hours real time over the course of 3 days).

I found the action entirely too repetitive. I wanted to love the game, but I find myself unwilling to pick it up again. It feels more like pulling weeds in Animal Crossing than the fun and adventure that I had with the Gamecube version. I ran out to the flowers, made flowers, exploded baddies, then ran home again. Maybe the breaking point was that for 4 game days in a row I had "high" levels of Smoglings and that meant that my flower growth rate crawled, so I just got tired of it.

Still the game has merits, and I'm probably going to gift it to a friend's daughter. I think she'll be able to really get into it and enjoy it, and that's better than having it gather dust on my shelf. After all, I do love Chibi and I want him to be able to get out and play, even if it's not with me.

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