Ajescent

User Score
8.0

Presentation - 8.0
Gameplay - 8.5
Value - 8.0

Amidst the pletora of First Person Shooters and year in sequels, you often come across the odd game that dares to be different. This time around, Afrika tries to bare that title.

You play as either Eric or Anne ( I chose Eric), a photographer working for an Agency that supplies wildlife photographs for publications like National Geographic amongst others. You are given a map of the local area and asked to take pictures of the wildlife which are then distributed to potential contractors, depending on the quality and variety of your initital pictures you will recieve special requests via email on your laptop from small time publications to the holy grail of holy grails the National Geographic.

These requests range from a simple picture of an Animal to specific action shots such as a Wild dogs hunting prey or the ever rare and elusive New born baby Elephant. Whatever picture you decide to submit for publication, it is judged in 4 categories. Angle, Target, Distance and the Technique used in taking the picture, failing severely in any of these category will lower your grade, ultimately affecting your final pay, money earned can be used to buy better cameras and lenses as well as other equipments which can prove useful out in the field such as a tent.

When you first arrive, you are taken on a few missions by a tour guide which acts as a tutorial teaching you the basics of controlling both the movement of your character and the handling of your camera. The L-analog stick controls movement with the down (D-pad) button acting as crouch, L1 calls up your binoculars and pressing L3 allows you to whistle at the animals in hope of getting their attention. Pressing Square takes you into "camera mode" wherein, R-Analog becomes Zoom control and L-Analog allows you to move the camera, L1 and/or Circle are used for taking pictures, which is where the problems begin.

During the tutorial missons you will note straight away that the key to getting that perfect A grade picture is to have patience in abundance but at the same time be ready to take that same picture in a split second's notice, this would be easy if your camera was actually responsive, quite often you will find yourself waiting anything between 2-5+ minutes for that perfect shot to come and when it does, pressing L1 or Circle only to find nothing happening and the moment passing. More often than you would like, you will find yourself mashing the L1 or Circle buttonto no avail, only to find pressing Square to get you out of camera mode and going back in again is the only remedy.

However with that said, there is a sense of pride to be had when you finally accomplish that perfect shot you waited so patiently for because in the end it pays off. The more animals you snap, the more jobs you get, the more jobs you get, the more areas you unlock and there are quite a few, each with a number of animals in them and vast in size. At the start of the game, your Tour guide drives the jeep in a pre-determinded path allowing you a chance to either snap the animals from the back, observe the surrounding areas through your binoculars or ask him to stop via L2 so you can dismount the jeep (X) and walkaround (only a few feet, straying too far and you are teleported back to the jeep).

At first this systems is irritating at best as the linear path taken by the guide becomes laboured and tedious but when you are finally given control of the jeep and freedom of the maps, you suddenly begin to miss the chauffered lifestyle primarily because when a new day starts, you have to start from base camp and drive all the way to a mission site which can often be as much as 5+ mins away (not including load times which there are many) and after clearing some areas, driving through them over and over again becomes tiresome and irritating, the game does not offer you the chance to teleport to already visited locations but was kind enough to offer you an option to teleport back to base when you finish a task-

Speaking of tasks, quite often you will be offered a number of missions in one go which deal with different animals and requests but at the same time all feature in the exact same area, with the aforementioned problem in mind, it doesn't help that you are only allowed to "accept" one mission/request at a time. After completing Mission A, it seems rather pointless to go all the way to camp, submit your picture, accept Mission B, drive back to the mission site and begin again(in most cases you are better off starting a new day as by the time you complete your journey, the day is all but over). Luckily if you remember the criterias for the mission, you can complete it without having to do all that however based on the fact that some mission events are only triggered when they are your active mission, it adds unnecessary irritation. Though with that said, after only 8hrs of playing I got the feeling I'd barely scratched the surface in the variety of missions and things to do.

One minute you find yourself hiding in a tree trying to take a picture of a Giraffe drinking water and the next you are trying to lure out a Rainbow Chameleon out of hiding whilst trying avoid 3 VERY angry Elephants. The animals come in two different varieties in this game, timid or aggressive.

The first sight of you, the timid animals will scamper whilst the aggressive ones will charge at you. Either way, a level of common sense and stealth is required when approaching your target in both situations you are offered a number of shrubs and rocks to hide amongst or behind but when the aggressive animals see you, a red circle encroaches your vision meaning the animal is feeling hostile towards you and you should run asap (getting cornered by 2 angry elephants is very embarassing FACT).

If you fail to get away in time, the animal will charge at you (the game kindly leaves the details to your imagination) and you'll wake up back at base camp, losing all the pictures you'd taking that day.

As I've said before, there's a number of things to do in this game and the equipments you are given to do them with are quite technical and clearly aim for the enthusiasts (but at the same time are easy to use for those not in the know), a variety of Sony branded Cameras and lens are up for purchase supposedly faithfully recreating their real life counterparts.

Unfortunately there's were the "beauty" ends, majority of the visuals are often hit or miss. Your companion (in my case Anne) is beautifully designed and "easy on the eye" even though s/he does absolutely nothing whatsoever to help you when out on the field (except to trigger a cut scene here or there). Speaking of the field, the game clearly shows its age on this front with much of the scenary looking unattractive especially when compared to today's standards, I often wince in pain when my Jeep crashes into a rock hard shrubbery remeniscent of a ps2 (dare I say ps1) game. Some of the animals are nicely animated with little life like details and characteristics which after a while overshadow the often uninspired visuals of everything else.

All in all, this game is not a visual jauggernaut, it's by no means one for the masses and it sure as hell won't make you drop your guns and go for something more leftfield, this game is somewhere in the vain of flOwer, flOw and all the other games who clearly "didn't read the script". If you like your games to be a break from the norm, this will definetely be right up your street. Once you get pass the little frustrations in controls and mechanics, you'll have yourself an interesting and often rewarding experience.

I score it 8/10