How could this game not be fun? The commercials for the movie look great.

Truth be told my huddling mass of followers, marketing geniuses know that the marketing is where all the effort, talent and money must go. Put it all into the commercial, the preview, the poster and the box art and an audience you will have regardless of the quality of your product.

I have no doubt that Robots, the movie, will be great. But the game is certainly not. It's not surprising to find another poor, movie-inspired game but considering all of the powerful corporations behind this project, not to mention the fact that this premise lends itself perfectly to a GBA game, it's disappointing to see these results. It's not that my expectations are too high, this game is a real drag.

Rodney Copperbottom is an inventor that finds himself working for a poplar company in the big city. He stumbles across a plot by some evil bots to take control of the city. With the help of a few friends, Rodney embarks on quest to vanquish the foes and make the world a better place for robots everywhere. What an incredibly unique storyline. Was it perhaps inspired by an article in Readers Digest?

The game boasts upgradeable parts and weapons. Unfortunately the accuracy of the weapons is low. The controls are loose and sometime they don't even register a command. Very sloppy. The game is presented in a slightly angled isometric perspective which allows for some convincing, faux 3D environments. It's just too bad that most of these environments are empty. Some of these maps are huge but they are almost all devoid of robotic life and enemy encounters.

Some of the gadgets and weapons could have really made this game fun to play if they weren't so annoying to use. Stuffed with some side scrolling platforming and other elements such as the transport system in which robots race down a metallic half pipe on their balls (you figure it out), the gameplay is a mix and match compilation of mini-games that are neither original nor fun.

The animation of the sprites is excellent. The characters look great and move around very smoothly. It's just too bad there isn't much for them to do. The music is good but it doesn't sound as though there are any samples from the movie. Perhaps the producers of the movie saw this game in development and wanted to distance themselves from it as much as possible - which is what I would advise you to do. Robots definitely has got a few screws loose.