Sega's Dreamcast is known for lots of high quality games, but one that is always overlooked is No Cliche's Toy Commander, a third person shooter that allows you to soar through the air in fighter jets or barrel through obstacles in a jeep, the only hitch being that you're playing as toys that are stuck inside someone's home. The sense of scale is truly amazing, and it's just a lot of fun performing all sorts of acrobatic maneuvers underneath kitchen tables and in some little kid's bed room. It's just a really exceptional game, one that came to mind as Nintendo unveiled the upcoming GameCube title, Chibi-Robo.

Featuring a similar Toy Story perspective, Chibi-Robo casts you as an itsy bitsy toy robot (as in three inches tall) of the same name that's given as a gift to a young girl named Jenny Sanderson, a strange girl who wears a hat with a frog on it. More of a helper bot than those pieces of crap at Best Buy, Chibi roams about the house completing various tasks, most of which involve house work. Unlike my lazy ass, Chibi-Robo loves to clean about as much as Martha Stewart, so part of the game revolves around using his elbow grease to wipe stuff off the floor, eliminate stains, and throw away trash.

His primary goal, what he lives for really, is to make the entire Sanderson family happy. This is not only accomplished by flaunting his Oxy Clean skills throughout the entire house but also through solving problems so that everyone has a smile on their face. For his efforts, aside from the satisfaction of a job super well done, he'll receive cash that can be used to purchase items.

The thought of picking up garbage for several hours may not sound appealing to you, and if it isn't, I perfectly understand, but believe me when I say that the developers of this game have made it fun, especially since Chibi has a very limited power supply. Cute as a button, he walks against the weight of his power chord that trails behind him, though if you want to run faster you can instruct him to place it atop his head. When he's low on energy, all you have to do is locate an outlet and plug him in, and for the sake of time it recharges him in a few seconds. But what's really cool about this is his energy doesn't deplete every two minutes, so while you should keep an eye on the battery life (located on the bottom left portion of the screen) and some activities drain it quicker than others, the entire game doesn't revolve around it.

Continue...