An Hour of Gaming: Jambo Safari
January 8th, 2010
As a way to keep up my gaming I thought a good thing to do would be to set aside 1 hour of my day, every day, to play a game and report back with my findings. These won’t be long reviews, and I won’t go into massive depth on story or gameplay. What I will aim to do is give the gist of a game from my 1 hours playing. I may go back to games I like, or I may try something new every day. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, recommendations or thoughts on this plan!
On with the games!
The first game I have decided to play is Jambo Safari on the Wii, developed by Full Fat and published by SEGA. As good a game as any to start with I think.
The game is based on an old arcade property, where players would drive around a reserve and try to collect up sick or injured animals. The basic aim of the game remains the same, but a number of features have been added to pad out the game.
The core of the game is still driving and capturing animals, and it’s actually rather enjoyable. The controls are iffy, using Z to accelerate and C to break, for me this meant using the same finger – not the best start to a driving game. Due to the very simple nature of the gameplay and the open plains you drive on, breaking didn’t seem needed so I was soon over this control limitation. My other issue was that objects in the world are either solid as a rock and will stop you dead or else as dangerous as oxygen, seeing you drive straight through them. This can often mean you need to reverse away from something that you have just crashed into, which is cumbersome and slow to engage.
Enough of the griping, from here on in I found the game really quite relaxing. It’s never going to win any awards but it’s a solid title that gives you exactly what it says. Beams of light shine down from the sky leading you to your next mission (which you can complete in any order), simply drive where instructed and your challenge is set down. Things such as catch 3 lions, race a track in a given time or collection missions for other people you meet around the park. I managed to get into the 2nd area of the game while playing and found the missions to be relatively easy but still enjoyed them. I think I’d actually be tempted to play this game further!
There are a few issues while playing, the graphics can make it very hard to see whats happening, the radar is very unclear, you can’t really place where you are within it due to there being no clearly defined player marker. I also found collection missions hard due to the items I was collecting not being very clear within the world. The improvements of these to points would have enhanced the game a great deal in my opinion.
I had a quick play with the customisation features, selected a new car with a camo paint job, the selection of options seemed deep and easy to navigate. I also visited the vet area where your captured animals go. You can name them, pet them and I believe help in their treatment though I did not have anything to treat. I named a few animals and decided to stroke one, you have to find the areas it likes being touched in (dodgy) with the pointer, and then his happiness will rise as you stroke. I found it hard to find the right areas and it didn’t make a lot of sense, the animal ended up more angry afterwards than it had been before!
So, my quick play through and what’s my verdict? I really rather like the game, the graphics are not amazing but suffice, gameplay is simple and relaxing and you’re not killing anybody which makes a nice change from the norm! It’s no masterpiece and don’t expect it to live up to the offerings of Nintendo, but it’s a solid title and a great non-stressful way to spend your time.
As these pieces are based on a very quick play I’m not going to give a rating, instead one of two options, a ‘try it’ and a ‘don’t bother’, seems simple enough and probably about all I can realistically offer. So what of Jambo? i say:
Try It!
Tags: arcade, caring, driving, full fat, jambo safari, nurture, sega, try it, Wii
This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 12:18 am and is filed under Games, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
