Astro Boy is not the Japanese Pinocchio. He might sound awfully similar, what with being a robot (rather than puppet) who desperately wants to be a real boy, but actually Astro Boy is a hell of a lot cooler. He’s a robot boy who fights crime, evil, all the usual bad stuff. He does this thanks to his impressive arsenal of weaponry, including a machine gun that fires out of his posterior to put it nicely. It makes for an excellent sounding video game character doesn’t it? It did once upon a time in the guise of Omega Factor for the Gameboy Advance, however this game is not very good at all. Instead it is positively mediocre.

To be fair to the Astro Boy name, this game is based on the film rather than the Manga which makes a crucial difference. Astro Boy this time round is a perfect example of just how half-hearted a game can be when made in conjunction with the release of a film of the same name. The game follows the narrative of the film quite well, with some brief expansion but nothing too major. Cut scenes from the film are used in the opening and closing sequence of the game but disappointingly all other cut scenes use the in-game engine’s graphics to demonstrate what’s going on. Astro Boy wouldn’t look out of place on the Playstation 2 despite having the graphical prowess of the Wii behind it, so it’s a shame to see the graphics are so middle of the road. Much like the rest of the game, the graphics are just rather hideously bland and uninteresting.

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