Tak and The Great Juju Challenge
Tak and Loc are chosen to represent the Pupanunu tribe in a race to win the favor of the Moon Juju goddess.
The race, held once in a generation, requires skill, endurance and being better and faster than your opponents.
You compete by winning races, destroying more objects, collecting more points then the other teams and all
in the shortest time possible, and everything is timed. There is a tutorial level to help you get the feel of
the character navigation and here, pressing "X" when it appears on screen will provide
clues as to which buttons to use. These on-screen instructions are too ephemeral for a game
meant to include kids and a more robust game manual would have been a wise move.
There are four worlds in which your skills are tested. Each world has three levels and a
Juju boss. Once you have won in all three levels and beaten the boss you will qualify for
the Great Race. You have to win the race to continue to the next world. When you
succeed in all three worlds, you are ready to take on the other contestants in the Great
Juju Challenge -- finally! Your success depends upon how skillfully you can use the
special abilities of Tac, the short one who uses magic, and Loc, the big brawny one. The
game is optimized for dual play but can be played for single player -- it's just more work.
The scheme of cooperative play is big this season -- see Wallace and Gromit:
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
The graphics are well done, so that playing around in the various worlds keeps being
interesting, but the constant competition can be wearing. More enemies are matched by
more spells and skills. There are some especially memorable scenes -- riding elephants
and destroying every thing in sight and the changing of character and skills by putting on
different costumes -- a technique used in Scooby Doo! Unmasked. And while I
am at it, the alchemy of recipes and the breaking various items to get the raw material to
make "blessing gems" is right out of Atelier Iris. Am I detecting a certain "style"
to this year's games?
Playing the GBA version after the GameCube is like drinking fat-free milk.
Healthy but you miss the music, the graphics and the clever moves. I'll do it the other way around the next time.
Reviewed by: Editor - 11/05
Ages: Everyone
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