Robots review

You don't need to have seen the animated movie that this is based on to come to the conclusion that Robots is a distinctly average side-scrolling platformer. As with many 'kids' games, it's wilfully simplistic and makes use of all the standard platforming devices with little imagination.

The premise is that you must find spare parts for the other characters you stumble across throughout the game, while negotiating the usual array of enemies, lifts, switches and ledges. You're accompanied by a little flying 'droid called Wonderbot which you can utilise to reach areas that you couldn't otherwise access.

To start with, you're armed with just a wrench with which to slew robotic adversaries but soon pick up additional parts, which you can combine, using the bottom screen and the stylus, to create new weapons. Ho and, indeed, hum.

The one area to show some flair is the transportation system in which you must control a sphere rolling down a half-pipe (it's not dissimilar to the mini-games in the recently re-released Sonic the Hedgehog 2), which makes good use of both the DS's capacity for 3D visuals and the touch-screen.

But aside from that, Robot's multiformat roots are readily apparent throughout and, as such, there's little else here that utilises DS's unique interface. It's a serviceable platformer but, come launch day, it's not going to be on anyone's 'must have' list.

Robots is released for Nintendo DS on 11 March