Customer Reviews

Cubivore

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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...

Cult Classic- something that usually doesn't do well when first released but over time gains steam and becomes sought after by people (perfect examples The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Klonoa Door to Phantomile) Why did I choose to open up with that definition? Because Cubivore is most certain to become a cult classic. Zany story? Check. Unbelievably weird? Check. No advertising? Check. Fun Game? Big check. This game is unlike anything that's come before it and that's a good thing. Every second I played Cubivore was rewarding and extremely satisfying. It takes the simple premise of evolution and runs with it. The only two flaws I can find are it's length and graphics. Unfourtunately this is a rather short game. Upon playing it for 13 hours the experience was over. Other than wanting to relive the magic there's no reason to replay this either. Nintendo said when designing the Gamecube they kept N64 ports in mind and hence made them easy and simple to do(we see this technology put to use in the recently released Legend of Zelda preorder bonus disk). That's what this is folks, a port of a three year old Japanese N64 game. This is a rather ugly game. The blocky graphics can be forgiven considering that was the games Cubist art direction but the poor draw distance, constant fog, and ugly water can not be. Overall I enjoyed my 13 hours with Cubivore and I bet a lot of you will to if you can look past the ugliness ( it's the inside or in this case, the gameplay that counts). Also the fact that I'm about to replay the whole thing again with no incentive to do so should prove a testament to this games charm.

When I got this game I was delighted. I started playing it and I loved it! The only downside is you can only save after you finish a level or mate. Don't start playing hard levels unless you know you have a lot of time. Overall, I think it's a great game!

Fred's Review:
9/10 stars

Most people would consider this to be a game that was never suppose to see the light of day. Most people don't get games that are too "Kiddy" or games that are just plain weird. But what's wrong with that? I purchased this game and after an hour of playing I realized this game was awesome. It's easy to pick up and offers quite a good challenge. In the second story, one of the bosses i considered to be my most hated enemy, I could only take 2 hits without me dying but i found a clever way to beat it. I think most people need to try this game because you can learn something from it-That it doesn't matter how strange and weird the game is, but it matters how good the gameplay is. I know this game has sold very few copies but I found this game to be one of my favorite games. It's consumed more than 20+ hours of my life and I still go back to play it every once and a while. You try to become the King of The Cubivores by mutating 100 times(You'll have to go the game a few times to get that). You go through levels as a certain kind of animal(Pig,bear,chicken thing.) and you destroy the enemies to get to the boss who has a certain kind of meat. The bosses are frustrating at times because they have cronies too. I suggest you take out the cronies first but you just need to kill the boss and eat his meat to continue to the next level. After you have the meat yo can mate and mutate into a cubivore with one more limb than last time. This increases your attack,defense,HP,etc. You can change how you look by eating different color meat of enemies and you can also mutate that way. You continue through the levels doing this. Later you can get special meat that looks metallic that can super-boost your stats. After you get 100 mutations, you take on the Killer Cubivore (Final Boss) and you have to defeat him to become the king of cubivores. Try it out!

all though this game sounds like a bad game it's not! its actually the best game ever. in this game you start out as a newborn pig whos destiny was to restore wilderness back to the land. mutate and mate. until you you mutate for 100 times then you battle the killer cubivore. but besides pig there is also bear[hardest 1player] and bird[best 1 player] So good luck at getting to the top of the food chain.

Quirky and endearing are two words to describe Cubivore. You are a cube with meat flaps eating other cube's flaps to evolve into the King of Cubivores. At first the graphics may seem basic, but after playing the game, they are very appropriate and I love them as much as the rest of the game. Cubivore is an incredibly fun game with excellent music, an amusing story, humor, cool graphics, romance, violence, survival, limericks, and above all, great gameplay.

I rented this game and it was awesome. I rerented it for weeks and weeks on end and I've (almost) mastered it. Oh, and by the way, it looks sucky but it's good.

Cubivore is a game that, if given the proper amount of care and fine-tuning, could have been a groundbreaking classic. As it is, this romp is only mediocre, with a few glimpses of originality. While the concept of following the life of your creature and evolving into 100 different types of animal and living in a Darwinian world of "survival of the fittest" is great, this appeal soon wears off when you find yourself stuck in the redundancy of it all. It's the same, old formula level after level, only more of it. And the game causes you to be reborn (to restart) three times already, so there's no incentive to go back and see it all again. With that said, Cubivore isn't great, but its quirky and clever presentation is something that's gotta be seen. If you can get it for a good price, then do so.