Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (Hands-On) (Nintendo DS) Preview

Solatorobo has a very pretty graphical style, a sweet mixture of animé-esque visuals and cel-shading, and it’s definitely up there with The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Okamiden, considering that the game has some very large open spaces to explore. Starting with the slice of story, Red is set to infiltrate a facility atop his mech; this involves numerous bad guys and a lot of cross communicative chatter between him and his ship. Fighting is a simple real time affair, where you approach enemies and press A to flip them and pick them up to throw at others. Your steed also offers the ability to catch and toss back incoming projectiles, key to defeating a mini-boss later in the level. Whilst the combat remains almost painfully simple, it’s the ability to jump off your mech at any point you want that differentiates things. Doing this leaves Red as powerless as Samus in her Zero Suit, with just a stun gun for defence. However, this is necessary if you wish to interact with buttons and other objects and it’s easy to see challenges within the main game that involve stunning enemies, trying not get hit in order to lower bridges and the like so that you can proceed with your mech in tow.

Next in the demo pack was a collection mission with a twist. Here Red took to the skies, again on his mech, to pick up eight or so packages. However, the mech cannot fly forever and Red had to land in order to recharge its boosters. This was easily the most stunning part of the demo; areas stretch out in front of the player, while the tight and easy to use controls allow easy flight around the areas, the little sky island explorable without getting lost due to the map on the touch-screen, while arrows direct Red to his objectives.

The fishing demo was nothing special, more of a mini game than anything else. Through a combination of carefully mashing A, so as not to overheat, and reading the on-screen direction in order to resist against your catch, Red can scavenge for spare parts. These parts are then used to upgrade his mechanical friend’s strength, flying distance and damage hand outs. It took a couple of minutes to catch each fish/ship/mech, though, which was slightly too long and felt unnecessarily dragged out.