Review by: Michael Barnes

OK, let’s get it out of the way right up front. Gormiti: Lords of Nature is a kids’ game. If you’re over ten years old and do not intend to play the game with your child, younger sibling, or another affiliated moppet then don’t bother with it.

Based on an Italian line of action figures and cartoons that have been around for five years but available Stateside only since last year, the license is somewhat obscure—at least in the US. Given the fact that neither I nor anyone in my immediate peer group had heard of it until the release of this Wii and DS title, the game’s prognosis for success looks pretty dire and I suspect that most savvy Nintendo console owners will regard the game as little more than another piece of cheapjack shovelware.

That’s not really fair because I do think that very young gamers might have some fun with the game and if my own son were old enough to play it, I think I’d actually enjoy its simplistic, beat ‘em up gameplay, low-risk platforming, and easygoing puzzles. The storyline is pure Saturday morning cartoon fare- par-for-course gobbledygook about a group of kids that get transported to a magical land and turned into super heroic Lords each with a corresponding natural element struggling against some lava bad guys that are wreaking havoc on the more bucolic environs of the good guys. It’s cornball to be sure, but the goofy tone put the taste of overly sweetened breakfast cereal in my mouth and the feel of pajamas with built-in slippers on my feet.

One or two players control three of the Lords of Nature at a time. Each Lord has a standard attack, a ranged shot that can be charged, a ground-pound, and a super attack triggered by waggle when a meter is full. Trigger points call for certain Lords to activate their special abilities to reach certain areas, open gates, or provide the other characters with passage. These abilities are accompanied by over-enthusiastic slogans such as “Powers of the Forest, flow!” There are gems scattered through each of the incredibly small levels keyed to the colors of each Lord, and picking up the gems with the right character increases the player’s score. There are also secret collectibles hidden in each area, but they’re barely hidden at all. Each area ends with a simple boss fight that all seem to require the same strategy- wait until the boss does something that immobilizes it, and then beat the crap out of it.

It’s very gentle and unchallenging, the fail states are hardly punitive and once again, it’s pretty clear that the game is made for the very young. Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly repetitive and even in the first few levels I found myself bored with flipping the same switches, activating the same powers, and fighting the same bad guys over and over again. At one point, I actually suspected that a couple of the early levels were exactly the same.

One of the weirdest parts of the game was borrowed from, of all games, Braid. Just like in Braid, you can find puzzle pieces scattered throughout the levels and there are simple jigsaw puzzles to put together with them. However, the puzzles depict scenes and characters from the game, not some kind of cryptic sob story. There are also orbs that can be collected which unlock sliding block puzzles. Solving these creates a sort of character gallery, and you can make each character dance embarrassingly.