Cubivore

by Atlus

Product Features

• gamecube

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006N5T4
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 5, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,959 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

gamecube

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A quirky title, May 16, 2003

By 

Oz Thomas (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cubivore (Video Game)

Cubivore is a quirky title that is a lot of fun at first but quickly becomes repetititve.

The first thing you will notice about the game is it's style. As the boxart suggests, the entire game is made of extremely simplistic geometric forms. Cubes. All the animals, plants and even the clouds are boxes. While some might find this to be too weird or too ugly to look at(the graphics are definitely NOT state of the art), I found the style refreshing, and I believe many others may as well.

You start out the game as a box with one extra panel (I think they call you piggy or something at first). You're a weak little thing and you have to build up your strength and become a stronger animal(there's a story behind this, but it's far too weird for its own good). The way you build up your strength is by going around and eating other animals panels(in essence, killing them).

Killing an animal is a rather simple maneuver. You run up to the animal and attack it. Depending upon the strength of the animal, you may have to attack it many times before it faints and you can eat one of its panels. The attack system is similar to the one in The Legend of Zelda, with it's lock on technique. There is not a whole lot of technique to the battling, its mostly a case of "attack, repeat, block", but certain enemies are stronger than others, and that's where the strategy comes in.

There's quite a bit of strategy as to how you evolve. When you first start out, you must concentrate on building your strength, so you can only attack rather weak animals. As the game progresses, however, and you can attack stronger characters, and you must be careful to attack the right ones. Some colors will make you metamorphosize into a faster animal, while others will make you a better jumper. You have to decide what attribute is best, and metamorphosize accordingly (or die!!!).

There are a lot of interesting ideas in Cubivore. It's not your basic action game, role playing game or block pushing game. There's strategy. There's innovation. And the game is based upon the theory of "survival of the fittest". That said, it gets repetitive after a while, and there are some major flaws with the gameplay.

The game starts out rather hard because you are so weak, and you must quickly learn to be very strategic, because if you eat the wrong animals, you might not be strong enough to make it. But as the game progresses, it starts to get EASIER. It's probably realistic that as you get stronger, the game gets easier, but it hardly makes for balanced gameplay. Most games get HARDER as you get to later levels and start out relatively easy. Cubivore is hard right from the get-go and then becomes duller and easier towards the later levels.

The game repeats itself a lot. While the strategy element is a great touch, it's not enough. You basically walk around the environment, killing the different animals. That's it. You do this the whole game. Sure, there is stuff you can collect, and there's the strategy element, and you can try to find hidden points to increase your level, but most of the time, you will just be running around and attacking the different animals who all act about the same. It would have been nice to see some more variety.

The camera in this game is something that can not be overlooked. Quite simply put, the largely automatic camera is terrible. It's usually way too close to your character and many times goes completely bonkers for no apparent reason. You can move the camera with the C-stick, but very often, the camera just slams back into place as soon as you let go, so it's not much help. While this may seem like a minor issue, when you start battling enemies and they start circling you, believe me, the curses will fly.

All said, Cubivore is a decent game. Although there are some issues, it's a fun game. I can't really recommend it to buy, because it's not much fun for a long time(unless you really love quirky games), but if you can find it, it's worth a rent.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars King of the Cubivores, April 5, 2006

By 

TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Cubivore (Video Game)

Envision life cubed. You live in a cubed world, wander through cubed weeds and cubes full of water, and sport a cute little cubed body. When the sun rises it shines cubed sunshine and when the moon comes out to play, it also wears that shape. Other animals are shaped the way you are as well, and when you decide to eat you rip off cubed limbs and watch those cubed animals bleed puddles of cubed blood everywhere.

Cubivore is basically an evolutionary tale that takes you, a newborn, on a quest to be "The King of the Cubivores." To do that you have to find all the othe rtypes of cubivores, one hundred in all, and manage to "become" that type of beast. By becoming I'm not talking about the type of animal (ie: a pig) but instead the design of the limbs it has. The locomotion of the animal changes depending on what you take on, and you move forward in the game by adding appendages and taking out bigger animals. The addition of limbs comes from collecting certain types of things, which allow you to breed.
Ahhh, sweet cube lovin.

When you first start, you are weak and have to wobble around to find an advantage. You have one limb and, by the end, you can have five. That adds for interesting creature design and it adds for some really odd ways to take a beast into combat. You have statistics that control how strong your bite is as well and how much life you have, and you can also grow things like teeth and a horn that make you more powerful/ able to take off more of something. Along the way you also run across excercises that allow you to become more powerful, giving you a stronger bite or the ability to move in and bite off one of two limbs off of something in one swoop.

The flaws to the game is that it is an easy game to play, a button masher in some places, and tha you can beat it quickly if you simply wan tot play it through. Becoming the "King" is a little harder because you have to find all the different types of animals and sometimes that involves hidden areas and the coupling of types of shading, an dsometimes finding one of the hidden types is a little difficult. A few of the body types are hellish to use as well, making fighting almost impossible, and getting stuck with one of those is sometimes harsh. Still, an attack normally only knocks you over and takes one of your limbs at worst, and you can always get your limbs back by jacking up a lesser creature. So, running away works ooo so well.

That said, this is a great game and is one that I found fun. Its hard to find a different theme to play and this was one of those, and I loved it. I played it through until I managed to get all of the types, and then played some more to fight in some of the body types. As far as a "kids game;" the difficulty level is indeed easy BUT this game is all about ripping apart other animals. So, most people wanting something to sit and play their Gamecube to will enjoy this.
Its an underestimated game with a short playtime, but fun and something I liked. Try it first, see if you like it, and then buy if you find it sexy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you're looking for something unique, gobble this one up., May 2, 2005

A Kid's Review

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Cubivore (Video Game)

Even by my standards, Cubivore is a pretty strange game. In the game, you'll become a pig, a bear, and a bird. In your quest to restore Wilderness to the world, you must eat continuously until you gain 100 mutations (150 are possible) and eat the Killer Cubivore. The graphics are lacking, but the cubic art style is unique and interesting, and shiny surfaces actually look good. Playability is excellent, and you'll almost feel you've become your beast. Sound is the high point of the game, and although the music tends to get repetitive, the sounds of animals roaring and screeching was outstanding. Since the game's only good for one time through, there's not much replay value, but you're almost guaranteed to want to play through to see the end. And unlike some third-party games, there are few glitches. Good game overall, but there are some better ones out there. Now, if only you could eat people in the game or its sequel...