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Behold the power of JUJU!...or not (Reviews)

To be fair, action adventure/3d platform games have never been a favourite of mine and it was always going to take something special to change that. For the first few levels of Tak and the Power of JuJu I was almost a changed man! It's just a shame it didn't last long.

The game itself doesn't appear too bad at first glance and once the mildly irritating and wholly unskippable training level is over it starts off with a promising looking introductory movie. Generally the game is a good example of its genre and can rate highly amongst its peers. However after playing the game for a length of time it becomes apparent that this is a clear case of what I would like to define as 'over-kiddification'.

Graphically the game completely fulfils its potential: it is certainly cute! The backgrounds and scenery are detailed and fully interactive, as are all the animals encountered throughout the game. The cartoony feel along with its evident simplicity gives the game its target audience, but any gamer can appreciate the craft that has gone into creating the game environment. The characters encountered within the game are accurate and creative, with most of them serving a purpose. The pure comic value of placing a sheep on ones head and running about the terrain is unrivalled.

However the graphical representation of each type of animal leads the game further down the route of 'kiddification'. While the humour in the game can be appreciated easily, the game itself is spoilt by the whole over emphasis on childish humour, and representing characters in this sort of way only adds to it. In itself the game could have been very good, but the simplicity of completion (trust me, really simple) and over indulgence of the designers in emphasising appeal to children ruins the game for anyone over 13.

'Harsh! Too Harsh!' I can hear some cry. However there are positive elements in almost every game that can pulled out in moments of darkness and the shining lights of Tak and the Power of JuJu are the music and the game play.

Sounding like a contradiction yet? The game itself is easy to play and complete but it doesn't take away from the fact that the actual game play is good. Some of the tasks remain challenging for more than 2 attempts, (albeit not many of them) and along with that the detail paid to the background makes exploration almost a pleasure.

In general it was always going to be an uphill struggle for this game to get a decent review from this reviewer but...... Regardless of the distinct dark side approach of total over-kiddification the game is worth a try. It will not be one that you will sit and play avidly until you complete it but you may find yourself coming back to it more than once.

- posted by sydrik on 08.07.04
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