Create a monster from parts, and fight other monsters, complete with online fighting and trading. Eidos announce Monster Lab for Wii...

Eidos have announced a new RPG for the Wii in the form of Monster Lab. The title allows you to create monsters and fight/trade them in an online mode.

In a graphical style heavily influenced by the works of Tim Burton, Monster Lab is a dark cartoon RPG. The village of the monsters is full of personality, and the main aim of the game is creating the monsters themselves.

Monsters have both biological and mechanical parts. Mechanical parts can be created using the Wii Remote in various ways - such as a soldering iron, complete with the need to shake if it should become too hot. You will also have to deal with 3 main scientists in the game: Professor Fuseless, specialist mechanical aspects of monsters; Dr. Sandabar, specialist in biology, and Dr. Tchesombra, expert in chemistry. Players will need the help of all three to assemble their monster pieces.

There are around 150 parts in the game collect, which can all be combined in various ways. This means that there are 100 million possible monsters. There will be "recipes" that you can collect to help you in choosing the right parts, and many of the monsters will be... well, useless. Different combinations also have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The combat of the game is stated to be (in terms of complexity) between Pokémon and Final Fantasy. You don't attack the monsters themselves, but rather their limbs. As you "kill" limbs, they fall off of the monster, which (naturally) makes your opponent weaker. On top of this, Monster Lab features online modes. Monsters of the same weight category (and therefore of similar strength) can battle it out from any two parts of the world. You can also trade pieces, recipes or whole monsters with people from around the world.

Monster Lab is planned for release in June 2008 for the Nintendo Wii.