Safari holidays have always been a bit of a luxury being restricted to the more wealthy traveller, which isn’t a bad thing really as it protects the wildlife from the masses. But most people, if asked, would probably admit that they’ve always wanted to go to countries like South Africa, Kenya etc. and embark on a safari – The result of visiting zoos as children and seeing all the fabulous wild animals. The problem here is that the animals are not in their natural environments and what could be better than seeing these wonderful creatures at home ? Nobilis have sought to address this for the younger child by releasing the edutainment title Safar’Wii. So aside from the lovely play on words in the game’s title does Safar’Wii roar like a lion or squeak like a mouse in the edutainment gaming market ?
As a wildlife reporter for the Animal News you are despatched to Animal Island , discovered off the coast of Japan, to investigate and log the many different species of animals. Choose your male/ female caricature and off you go !
Your companion throughout is a little robot guide – ‘Robo-maru’ who delivers all the game basics in a tutorial, helps in your search for animals and drives the jeep around the island (albeit in a seemingly impatient mood). Your singular objective is to successfully photograph the wildlife of Animal Island
Every mission begins in camp where you must get ready for that day’s work. Your assignment will be given by the editor of the Animal News who may request such images as a giraffe eating leaves or an elephant washing. Before you set out you must prepare your inventory (cameras, binoculars, jeep etc.), which can be progressively upgraded throughout the game. When you are done get in your jeep and start exploring the island. Robo-maru will automatically drive you along the dirt tracks charting a route around the island. A map of the island is accessible which indicates your current location and the navigation route to the Savanna area,the mountain, the sea, a waterfall and jungle region. Remaining in the jeep, you can move the camera to look around the locations, where item crates can be found containing useful items and tokens hidden for you to uncover and collect . Collecting and using these items increase your familiarity rating with animals, allowing you to get better photos. Familiarity is the key word throughout and there are several ways to accomplish this. Taking plenty of pictures of the same animal will increase familiarity presumably because they get used to you being around and wearing animal disguises makes it easier to approach them as does a camouflage tent.
Things are not always straightforward though as there are dust clouds and rustling bushes to sift through to find the island’s inhabitants. You can’t photograph the animals from your jeep so once you locate or suspect the presence of an animal leave the jeep to continue your pursuit on foot. Initially you will be restricted to an area containing one or more types of animals, allowing you to get close and take photos of them for your collection. These animals will have a low familiarity rating but by taking more pictures you build up their trust so you can get the pictures you want.
It isn’t always possible to get the requested photograph on the day of the assignment but there is no penalty, in fact the game is pretty liberal this way – unlike a real newspaper there doesn’t seem to be strict deadlines. Instead the assignment carries over to the next day or until you finally meet the requirements. Unfortunately the items collected don’t carry over to the next day/ mission.
Once you feel you’ve got the all the pictures possible its time to head back to camp to select the best ones to put into your album and then pick three of these to send to the editor. He then casts a critical eye over your work and grades it as he sees fit. There are only three grades – ‘gold’ , reserved for the best and may only be achieved after several attempts at the same assignment, ‘silver’ – an average picture and ‘no good’ which basically is issued when there are no animals included in image, partial animals, or you cant tell what the photo is of !
So that’s the basic premise of the game – Travel around island, take photos, get them graded and upgrade equipment. Every now and again there are mini games but these are few and far between with no impact on the outcome of the game.
For the controls you do need the Wiimote and Nunchuck. You use the Nunchuck controller to move your character around the island, with a slight tilt of the control stick allowing you to creep closer towards the animals for a better picture and tilt further to make the character run. The easy to use control system will be appreciated by the younger audience.
Using the camera and taking photographs is extremely easy to do and the menus are simplistic making for a user friendly interface easy to master for even the advisable lower age bracket of three years old. I would say that the gameplay may be too easy and repetitive for older children
The graphics I found to be a mixed bag. Travelling around in the jeep, the vista is excellent with realistic environments with enough detail to look realistic but when on foot I did think the quality of visuals weren’t quit as good. The animals too have a quasi-realism effect while the player character, Robomaru and editor have a cartoon styling and although both styles are well executed it just seemed a bit of a strange blend at times. This was especially noticeable when you get closer to the wildlife and are hugging pandas or riding elephants etc.
The audio for the most part is unobtrusive. The music is on a loop and the ambient sounds are pretty good. You can listen to noises made by some of the animals in their data files too.
Summary
All in all Safar’Wii delivers a nice blend of gameplay for the younger age group. The graphics are of a good realistic quality and the addition of the more cartoony style caracitures will appeal; combine these qualities with a user freindly interface and easy to use controls for a title that will please many young aspiring wildlife photographers.There are also data files that contain information on all animals (21 species in total)
