Hands On The Munchables

The Munchables is like the son of Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy. You control a tadpole-like creature that gobbles up aliens… space pirates that look like food. At Namco Bandai’s editor’s day I gave the quirky game a go.

The level I played took place inside a haunted house. You move the hungry chomper with the nunchuck’s analog stick and gobble up creatures by pressing A. Eating makes your Munchable grow. However, you can only eat enemies that are a lower level. If you encounter broccoli level 199 (levels can go above 100) you need to break it apart before eating it. Pressing B makes the chomper spin dash into an alien which splits it into a bunch of smaller, low level aliens.

You need to eat the snack sized creatures fast. My strategy of crashing into the aliens first and then eating them in hopes of getting a large combo failed miserably when they reformed into one giant alien after a few seconds. You don’t need to eat everything, but some weight sensitive switches require the chomper to be a certain level or higher before progressing further.

One of boss in The Munchables is a giant chocolate bar. While standing on the edge of a cake he’s unreachable. You have to repel the chocolate balls he spits to make him fall apart into the chocolate pool. That’s your chance to strike and eat a few pieces before he reforms, minus the pieces you digested.

The Munchables strong point is it’s colorful world and sense of humor. At the end of every level the chomper talks with an onion who asks how many orbs he has. You make orbs from the aliens you ate and you give them to the onion by pooping them out. Yeah, The Munchables is out there, but for $29.99 it might be worth a look.