A good 3D platformer. Usually light on combat with decent puzzle-solving. Basically, a poor mans SM64DS.
User Rating: 8 | Tak: The Great Juju Challenge DS
The Good: Fantastic 3D visuals for the DS. Puzzles are not too easy nor too hard. Most of the mini-games are pretty good. Cheap price tag. The Bad: Combat is too easy. No speech. Not nearly as long and grand as Mario 64 DS. No map overview. Driving minigame controls are pretty bad. Review: This game is one of the few 3D platformers for the DS, so that's a plus right there. The only other one I've played is Mario 64 DS. Compared to that game, this one doesn't have the bright bold colors and worlds, though it's graphics are still very nice. This game is based more in a jungle, pyramid, earthy type setting. The presentation overall is pretty good, just not near as slick as SM64. The upside in comparison as that this game is more linear. Linear in the fact that you don't have to replay the same level 8 times over, like in SM64. Much of this game's levels have it's shair of twists and turns though, and since the game never really hints you on what to do, there is a sense of exploration in this game, and a very small amount of backtracking. Just the way I like it. I never got into the story aspect of this game. Matter of fact, I really only bought this game for my son. And I should point out here, that this game is obviously lighthearted and not geared towards hardcore and older gamers. Anyhoo, this game focuses alot on platforming, which is fine since you have good jumping abilities in this game. You can triple jump to "float" across the air shortly, and it's very easy to control Jak (or Lok) this way. The penalty for missing a jump is simply to start over from the beginning of the jump series. I don't think there are any sort of "lives" to count here. And personally, I LOVE it that way. I hate punishing games that make you start from the beginning of the level and take away lives just for missing one jump *Yoshi's Island cough cough*. The game has it's fair share of puzzles too. And unlike the type of hints you'd expect from say a Zelda game, this game doesn't give any. Which is fine, because after a lil exploration, the answer becomes obvious. Not as obvious as you'd think though. Anyhoo, I think the puzzle solving was pretty balanced. My only complaint is that this game is pretty light on combat. The enemies are pretty spread out, which is okay, if they were interesting enemies and took different strategies to take down. But for the most part, they don't, lol, and it's mostly button mashing to wipe out any enemies. There were complaints about this game's length, so I expected it to be short going in. However, this game took me and my son a good 8-10 hours to beat, which isn't exactly THAT short to me, for a platforming game. The only other complaint would be that there is no speech in the game, the cutscenes are done by still shots and texts to move the 'story' along, which made the story that much less interesting. The sound in this game is okay. The music is generally good, but can get repetitive if you're stuck on the same level too long, lol. Same with the combat sound effects... Oh, there are minigames spread throughout the story mode too. Most of them are pretty good. The driving ones, not so good. The controls are very obtruse, but at least they are consistantly that way, lol, so you can get used to them. You can also replay the minigames the main menu at any time.
That's about it. I'd recommend this game to any young gamers in the 6-12 age range, especially fans of platformers, 3D platformers, or the Tak TV series.
