Ooga Booga Preview

Remember Ooga Booga? Announced by Sega late last year, the game was touted as a sort of strategy hybrid, which, as anyone who's seen it recently would attest to, can't begin to describe the game's fast-paced, twitch-heavy gameplay. We recently took a trip to Visual Concepts' San Rafael offices to get a firsthand look at the game. The project's producer, John Race, greeted us and subsequently briefed us about the game's every minute detail. Fans of quick and heavy online diversions should pay close attention.

	See it in motion!
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	Care to hear some words from the project's head? Then click right here--we have an exclusive video interview with John Race of Visual Concepts, who's more than happy to go into the game's finer points just for you, only on GameSpot Live!

Ooga Booga is easily one of the most immediately engaging games we've seen recently. The game, according to Race, draws a good deal of inspiration from Nintendo's Super Smash Bros., and it shows. Essentially, up to four players are thrown into deathmatch maps of varying sizes and layouts and are made to battle it out using a sizable arsenal of weapons at their disposal. The nature of these weapons and maps, of course, is what defines the Ooga Booga experience. Both the game's quirky visuals and cartoonish dynamics are primarily responsible. Race describes the game's visual feel: "We're really drawing on a '60s version of Polynesian kitsch and tiki culture." The look is definitely spot on, and the themes remain coherent all throughout. The tempestuous island goddess Ooga Booga, as the story goes, has the land's four lords engage in a series of battles during every lunar cycle, and the winner gains her unfailing favor. The lords in question--the kahunas--serve as your avatars, and each one has his or her own distinct visual character, as well as a unique gameplay focus. The battles themselves take place on a series of islands, each with one distinct topography. "These competitions take the form of real fast, frantic gameplay. Ooga Booga spreads spells across the island, and you have to run and snatch them up and try to cast them in order to score points on other people," Race elaborates. The result is a gameplay dynamic very similar in spirit to Nintendo's smackfest, though it often feels just a bit more open-ended; the tools at your disposal feel a tad more varied, and since the game itself is played via a third-person perspective, the rules are by nature a bit more complex.

Whether you play as Twitchy, the boar-riding kahuna, or Hoodoo, the semicorporeal kahuna, you can count on one thing: You'll be scrambling to collect quite a few shrunken heads. They are basically the game's lethal currency; you'll use them as projectiles, as well to fuel other types of attacks. They literally grow on trees and are scattered throughout the game's islands. But they aren't your only weapons; you'll also have a set of magical spells at your disposal, which are graciously scattered around the island at random intervals by the kind goddess. Along with the wild animals--the birds and the boars--that inhabit the island, these spells complement your mobile arsenal. Tikis, on the other hand--basically, idols that serve as stationary canons--are also gingerly placed throughout, which you can commandeer for the price of a few heads. These will fire a constant stream of projectiles at your enemies if they get too close. They're destructible, though, so placing them wisely is vital to using them effectively. In all, the collective arsenal is a like a good chemistry set--it facilitates a good number of scenarios off the bat, though only the morbidly curious will learn to use its more deadly configurations.

Race seems very pleased with the results: "It's weird [that] this turned out pretty close to exactly what we set to do. We were so focused on how we wanted to go with it--an online kind of Smash Bros. with almost some shooter elements worked into a third-person perspective. We're really proud of what we've done." Read on for a detailed look at the game's kahunas.