by Zac - July 8, 2004

Given only a cursory glance, Custom Robo might appear to offer a deep and rewarding experience. Upon further inspection, it becomes evident that the only thing Custom Robo offers is repetition and mediocrity.

Travel to another planet

Custom Robo, developed by NOISE, is essentially a RPG and third-person action hybrid which takes place on another planet. As the instruction booklet states, "There are worlds slightly different than ours. This is the story of one of them." In this 'slightly different' world (which is oddly flat, approximately one square mile, and home to at most 30 citizens), people fight in holographic arenas with telepathically controlled - you guessed it - custom robos. You, the son of a skilled robo commander, decide to become a robo commander as well, and the game starts with you waking up and applying for a job as a bounty hunter. The rest of the story involves fighting in tournaments, settling minor disputes, teaming up with fellow bounty hunters, government conspiracies, and saving your tiny world from destruction at the hands of a sentient robot. Excluding all of the text-dialogue, Custom Robo is approximately five hours long. Double that if you plan on reading the dialogue, but I would advise against it.

Combat in Custom Robo tends to be fairly repetitive. Despite the 50+ guns, 75+ parts (mostly bomb/missile launchers), and over a dozen robots, there is little variation. You'll find yourself using the same robot and guns every chance you get (you're forced not to sometimes), mainly because there seems to be a major lack of balancing. Some robots and weapons are close to worthless, and a few are ridiculously overpowered.

Multiplayer tends to be short-lived and overall un-enjoyable. There are 1v1, 1v2, and 2v2 options, though unless you're fighting a competent opponent (someone who owns the game or has at least spent a decent amount of time with it and thus knows what parts to pick), matches are very one-sided. Simply pick your overpowered robot and weapons and you can probably kill other players without being hit once.

Too simplistic

As far as visuals go, Custom Robo tends to be underwhelming. Aside from the well-done opening movie, Custom Robo generally looks like it could be a Dreamcast game. Characters are overly simplistic in both artistic style and in lack of polygons. In addition, outside of the robo arenas, environments are stale and boring.

Custom Robo does look significantly better once the first person mode is unlocked. However, you must put 5-10 hours into the game, and by then you're bound to be turned off by it.

Beep Beep Beep Beep

Custom Robo has no voice acting, and apparently the folks at NOISE think that plain-text is only for the weak, so they came up with a beep system. It's rather simple really; if a big character is talking, you'll hear deeper beeps. If a small character is talking, you'll hear high beeps, and of course there are beeps for who is in-between. This might have been close to acceptable if the beeps changed in pitch to convey some sort of emotion or expression in the dialogue. Instead they're all the same, there's just a lot of them; one for every word that appears on screen. Now, I'm not really a huge guy, so had this review appeared in Custom Robo, it would have been accompanied by a couple hundred middle-pitched beeps.

Outside of the beeping, which, thank god, can be skipped by tapping A (you'll just have to tap for 20 minutes, as characters often talk about nothing in short-sentence exchanges for lengthy periods of time), Custom Robo sounds alright. The composer was no Mozart, but the simplistic tech-themed music works well enough. The sound effects are similar; adequate but forgettable.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, Custom Robo is only notable for being consistent in its mediocrity. If you're a fan of the robot-combat genre, I would still suggest picking up something else, though you should at least find this game tolerable. It's certainly not the worst game I've played, but that's no endorsement, and there's a lot of better ways to spend your money.