Jambo! Safari Ranger Adventure (Wii) - Review by Chris

Introduction

Exploration games centred around the premise of educating a younger audience on various creatures and environments aren't new on the Wii. While the genre may not be positively overflowing with titles, there are certainly a small selection of good ones which facilitate this premise and allow for hours of endless enjoyment as you seek out a wide range of animals. Now Sega have decided to throw their hat into the ring and attempt to tread some new ground with Jambo! Safari: Ranger Adventure giving you the opportunity to take a young upstart ranger all the way from his fledgling feet right up to being head of an entire safari park.

Gameplay

Having tried their hand at various markets and genres on the Nintendo Wii this year, Sega have decided to step back a bit and provide something aimed more towards the younger gamers. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's strictly for that crowd as Sega have managed to provide enough content to entice even the most mature gamer. Jambo! Safari: Ranger Adventure puts you in the boots of one of 4 potential new head rangers for an expansive safari park, split into 9 distinct areas, where you'll start as a new recruit and have to complete copious amounts of challenges and missions to make your way to the top. To start, you'll be given a brief introduction to the workings of the safari park from one of your co-workers in the game's hub area. Within this hub area, you have access to your house and a garage, within which you can customise the outfits of your character or choose from a selection of licensed vehicles respectively. These two areas allow for an extensive selection of customisable options for both with new items being unlocked for completing missions, unlocking awards or can even be found within the plains and savannahs of the park. Along with the house and the garage, you have access to a map of the entire park in the hub area which will, later in the game, allow you to fast travel between the outposts in the further away areas to speed up your transport times and an enclosure area where you can send captured animals for treatment before sending them back out into the wild. Your final points of interest in the hub area are the various routes out into the park, which will be unlocked progressively after you met a certain quota of missions. There are only a couple of routes available from here but within the actual environments, there are many more routes to the other locations, making for a large game.

And with a large game focusing on a safari park, you'd hope that the content could match the scale. And luckily, it does but only just. Progression through the game is entirely open to your choices so the amount of time you spend in each area is up to you. The design of the missions you'll undertake are simple but they never seem to move outside of the basic fetch quests, time trial races or quests where you need to help gather information on animals or ferry tourists around the park. The best of the missions come in the form of the animal capture ones. Here, you'll have to drive after your target animal and lasso it before ensnaring it in a net. This brings up a mini-game where, while continuing to drive and steer your jeep, you'll have to keep a reticule within a circular area until it goes white to ensure capture while at the same time pulling on the rope to bring the animal closer to the vehicle. It's not particularly realistic but it's entertaining and certainly breaks up the monotony of the other missions. Away from this, your free to travel the locations in your vehicle to capture sick animals to send for treatment or take pictures to gather information which can be viewed from the hub area whenever you want, giving educational information to learn from. As a result, kids will definitely get the most out of it but older gamers will get something too. Finally, there's a multiplayer option for up to 4 players to take part in a series of small mini-games. It would have been nice to have the multiplayer option extend to the open safari park but the mini-games do provide some entertainment.

Controls

Playing the game requires you to make use of both the Wii-mote and Nunchuk with both traditional button based controls and motion gestures used throughout. Driving the vehicles requires you to use the C and Z buttons on the Nunchuk to brake and accelerate respectively and while the driving feels fine, although could perhaps have used some tuning to give it some added realism, it feels strange having the necessary buttons on the Nunchuk. It's something that takes a little getting used to, especially if you're used to other driving games on the console. The reversing mechanic will undoubtedly frustrate though as you have to hold the C button and after what can seem like an age, the vehicle will eventually reverse. It's not as seamless as it needs to be when you have to chase after various animals around the plains and savannahs. The motion gestures used are small but aim to replicate what happens in game as well as possible. You'll have to circle the Wii-mote as if you were twirling a lasso and then have to flick the controller to throw it at the animal you are chasing. It doesn't use the IR pointer for aiming and so it can be hit and miss for whether you hit the target or not but the game has compensated by making your moves with the analogue stick refer to your aiming. Keep the vehicle lined up within a circle and you'll get the target. It's good they've thought of this and does for the most part work well but when you have to physically capture the animals with the net it shows it's problems in that the vehicle just isn't as nimble in its turning to keep up with the animal.

Graphics

Wide open savannahs and plains met the gamer as they step into the world of Jambo! Safari: Animal Rescue, featuring plentiful numbers of animals, foliage and outposts to provide you with things to see and do. The overall presentation is good, with everything meeting a level of good quality. The ranger post which acts as the hub world from which you can access your garage or head out into the various areas of the safari park is perhaps larger than it needs to be seeing as there is little to do in this area but it all looks decent. Out on patrol, the same graphical quality is used on a much larger and expansive area, covering various forms of terrain and it definitely feels the part. While it's not meeting the highest of standards on the console or fooling you completely into thinking you are on safari, it's convincing enough to make you want to keep playing and keep discovering. The vehicle models and buildings are all designed well but both suffer from low quality textures, a problem which also extends to the environmental scenery. The collision detection for all of these elements is also off meaning you'll often find yourself getting stuck in the scenery and being unable to move your vehicle. The game's saving graces, however, come in the form of the character models. Those of the rangers feature a slightly exaggerated aesthetic that looks great and the animals are replicated well in both design and animation into the environments. There are unfortunately, but ultimately expected, frame rate issues that become very noticeable all too often due to the size of the environments you'll be patrolling and the number of animals running around.

Sound

The most prominent feature of the sound is that which you'll hear from your jeep. Above all else, the jeep is the noisiest meaning that the smaller and perhaps more important sounds can often go unheard. The sound gives the feeling of being behind a real jeep patrolling the sprawling savannah but at the same time, it brings you out of the experience and back to the real world due to the quality not being at the highest end of the scale. The sound effects for the animals and such are all done well enough, sounding the part, but again the problem of sound quality rears its head. There are no voiceovers so all information has to be read. It won't be a big deal for most people but perhaps having the information packs on the different types of animals would have made it more enjoyable for the younger demographic which the game is aimed at.

Final comments

Jambo! Safari: Ranger Adventure is an enjoyable title that provides a wide enough range of gameplay that'll keep people playing for hours. The opportunity to spend time patrolling the large open landscapes and healing injured animals will surely entice younger gamers but even older ones will get something from it. It does, however, fall into a routine very quickly and although fun can be had it can become slightly monotonous. The alternative modes don't help much to alleviate this issue but if you take it on its face value, you'll be able to enjoy it for what it is: a good quality title that will educate younger gamers to the lives of animals within the African savannahs while providing good clean fun.

Pro: Large open environments to explore, lots of customisation options, the capturing of animals is intuitive and fun
Con: Visuals and audio aren't of the highest standard, some frame rate issues, mini-games are a poor alternative to multiplayer patrolling
Final score: 6.8

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