Quickly you are charged with confronting and eventually defeating the Krawl, a vicious alien race intent on the destruction of every new culture they discover.Ĭrash landing on the first of the game’s planets, you discover an unconscious old pilot, who wakes to teach you of the power of the battle hungry pets known as the Spectrobes. The plot sees you assume the role of Rallen, a roguish young adventurer sent through space with his team mate, the overly cute Jeena, to complete basic tasks for the leader of your home Planet. Spectrobes’ main distinguishing feature comes with its emphasis on excavating fossils to gather your gang of eager pint-sized combatants, as opposed to rifling through the flora of Pokemon’s worlds. The game sees you explore seven planets, collecting, nurturing and fighting various cute alien creatures in what is something like a saccharine version of badger-baiting.
Though Spectrobes does everything it can to distinguish itself from its famous rival, it is impossible to play the monster-hunting game without constant reminders that you are playing a Pokemon clone. It is a sad truth that these two shortcomings feed into each other and sadder still that a game with as much potential as Spectrobes is peppered with the same faults that so many inferior children’s games suffer from.
Yet at the same time, it is equally common to find evidence of lazy game design in titles aimed at youngsters, who rightly deserve the same standards of quality that their elders take for granted. It is all too easy to stumble across a well made kid’s game given a critical savaging by a reviewer who clearly hasn’t considered the target audience over their own gaming requirements.