Cleril Reviews: Afrika

[Cleril]

Afrika is more of the "serious fun" we expect from Natsume to provide us. Unlike Harvest Moon though Afrika has us taking pictures, recording animal calls, and being mildly buggy. The game of course is still playable and in fact, is a fun, and rewarding experience.

The plot in Afrika is of the ordinary kind. You're either a journalist male or a photographer female, and neither of them are different in any practical way. Being such a profession you go out onto a reservation of African animals to take safaris and capture the animals, with your camera. Often you get email for specific shots of animals and such. The story is there, it's fair, and you won't really care.

You don't play Afrika for the amazing story arc anyway, instead you play it for the gameplay, which is halfway decent. The first few hours of Afrika you are not able to freely move about and are guided by a one-time useful man for a few in-game days. Essentially it's a tutorial for teaching you about how to work your camera. It's far too long though and you'll be wanting to get into the meat of the game long before waiting for 5 minutes while the guy haphazardly drives the jeep for you....then he just stays at camp and does nothing else.

After the tutorial you are able to drive the jeep yourself but by that time you'll say to yourself "Me? Drive? Never!" not because the NPCs are good at driving (spaztastic) but because it will be an hour or so before the game lets you freely move about. After you are allowed to drive you get a free leash....until you realize you can't fully explore all of the land until you pass enough missions.

Before missions, let's talk jeep. Your jeep goes about 40 MPH tops and while it controlls like a jeep it doesn't crash like one. Bushes are your fear and the time it takes to get the jeep up and driving again has a few seconds of delay. Don't worry about running over animals though, you can't kill them and your partner just tells you to watch out.

Missions are given to you in little batches. Exclamation marked missions are ones that progress the story and open up new areas of the map, which allow access to new animals. You'll use your camera to take shots of a meerkat on it's hind legs, or an olive baboon carrying it's baby on it's back. Often though missions are tedious since you can only accept one at a time and certain animals like the olive baboon you have already seen, but you only see them carrying babies during that particular mission. Due to this it makes the animals seem more static like.

The camera itself is easy to control. Press square to bring up your camera, use the right stick to zoom in and zoom out. Press the R1 or circle buttons lightly to focus the shot and then press them fully to snap the picture. You control your character with the left control stick and use the right control stick to look around, like in a third person shooter. Using the directional pad buttons you can lean left/right and crouch to sneak up on animals. You even have to turn the controller sideways to take a vertical shot.

Why would you sneak up on animals? Well, they all act realistically to your presence. Giraffes will run away but elephants will charge at you should you invade their personal space. Should you get attacked you are sent back to camp and all of your photos taken will have been lost. You really should never get hurt though as every animal gives a warning as the screen slashes red to signal that you are too close and as long as you move away a bit the animal will calm down.

The game is by no means difficult but more of a patience test. Often the game requires patience over skill. It doesn't take much skill to photograph a hippopotamus yawning but it does take time. The skill aspect of the game is how to work your camera which isn't too hard. Auto mode is what most players will want to stick with unless you are a shutter finger and know your away around cameras. As long as you don't move or fidget the camera every which way you'll get a decent shot once you focus.

Some missions do require you to pick up, for example, an elephant making it's signature "Blaah" sound. You use a sound boom to pick such a thing up but it's really not much different than taking a picture, hell, it's even less complicated. Point at elephant, wait, wait, wait, and tada, mission complete.

In terms of graphics only the animals are worth looking at. Those huge sprawling lands are dull, low-res textures which would probably make Morrowind laugh. The world itself is full of 2D greenery and is all dirt, no substance. Although I must say the male characters pants are amazing. All those creases, folks, pockets, it must have taken three weeks to make those pants. Other than the animals those pants look amazing.

The animations of all the animals look realistic and go without a hitch...except when a giraffe meets a tree in which case half of the giraffe's neck goes right through it. Your character is rather slow and running looks clunky. Only the crouching animations are any good besides the animals.

Music is the same track you'll here whenever an NPC drives you. Other than that you'll only hear the ambient sounds of elephants, birds, and flies. The one track doesn't get annoying but it seems out of place with it's energetic vibe while the NPC keeps hitting the breaks every .25 seconds.

The one big and first issue you'll come across are the opening load and save times. When I first bought the game, got it installed and pressed start the game sat there loading for about 4 minutes. I thought it froze because after playing most other video games for the past 10 years it never took this long to load the game up. Also, the saving times are another good 4 minutes long or so.

Okay, so do I get it?

If you have a shutter finger, sure. If you're more interested in it than Modern Warfare 2, then be my guest. If you liked Endless Ocean then it's still a go. On the other hand you may not like the slow pacing, the patience needed to get your shots, and the opening load and save times will make you wish this was on a cartridge.

Casual gamers are likely to get into it but even hardcore gamers like me can buy it and not get buyer's regret.

Cleril tried to convince the monkey not to commit suicide but monkey see, monkey die. That sounded better in Cleril's head.

Rating: 7/10

[jango]

nice review mate, enjoyable read (even if the game didn't interest me much)

gj

[Cleril]

nice review mate, enjoyable read (even if the game didn't interest me much)

gj

I myself grant that I may sell the game back eventually. I've unlocked all the areas to my knowledge but still have missions to attend to.

Thanks for reading jango.

[LiNuX]

Very nice review. I've seen tons of videos of the game but never really got my attention enough for me to consider playing the game, just as Jango.

For future reviews, try to have some sort of a rating system. We already know what you thought of the game and sometimes numbers can mean the difference between a purchase or a pass to certain gamers.

Good job nonetheless. Keep it up.

[Cleril]

Very nice review. I've seen tons of videos of the game but never really got my attention enough for me to consider playing the game, just as Jango.

For future reviews, try to have some sort of a rating system. We already know what you thought of the game and sometimes numbers can mean the difference between a purchase or a pass to certain gamers.

Good job nonetheless. Keep it up.

Can I just be crude and show a rating at the end? Rather than adding up numbers? I kind of got out of the habit of focusing on ratings in all of my reviews.

I'll just throw a number out of ten at the bottom for now, if that works for you.

[LiNuX]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Give the game an overall rating near the end, most of our other reviewers have done the same.

Thank you.

[Cleril]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Give the game an overall rating near the end, most of our other reviewers have done the same.

Thank you.

Your welcome.

[Iceskater101]

is this game only on the PS3?

[Cleril]

is this game only on the PS3?

It's a PS3 exclusive, yes. Not on PC or any other console.

Priced at 50 bucks when I got it a few weeks ago, likely still that.

[HamadaLFC8]

Great review man! Good job and keep it up!