Tak and the Power of Juju

"Tak is a thorn in my side"

I remember when this game first came out. There were commercials for it all over Nickelodeon, because Nick Games was so proud of their latest "achievement." The commercials had all kinds of propaganda for the game. Apparently, Nickelodeon gathered up all of the positive comments they could find about their latest game from random game magazines and then posted them all over the commercials... and of course they left out all of the negative comments! What really does it for me is that Nickelodeon even paid a band to make a rock theme song for their new game, and of course that went on the commercials as well.

So think about it. A young, impressionable kid watching TV and seeing all of this propaganda for this new game. I thought the theme song was awesome and the very few bits of gameplay footage the commercials showed looked enjoyable. Of course I bought this game and now I just can't stand to look at the cover of it.

PRESENTATION: 10/10
Like I said before, the commercials made this game look awesome. Other than that, the basic theme of the game is that you play as a little shaman kid who lives in a tribal world. He must save his land from an evil dude and... it's really a shallow story, but the humour in the game is a definite selling point.

The cutscenes are absolutely hilarious! Oh, and of course they showed pieces of the cutscenes in the commercials and that is mostly what made me want to buy the game. It's the funny cutscenes! Well, everyone knows that funny cutscenes are not what make the game.

GRAPHICS: 8/10
The graphics are pretty good. They look a bit primitive at times, but the cutscenes, characters, and especially the environments are very well-done. It's got a nice art style to it. I can't explain it any better than if I just say... it's kind of like slightly distorting reality. The trees, buildings, people, and animals you see in the game look like crazy caricatures that exaggerate certain features.

MUSIC/SOUND: 9/10
The music in this game has a very tribal sound to it. The songs definitely fit the mood for each area, and many of the songs are very catchy. I've often found the chicken island music getting stuck in my head because of how catchy it is. There's really not much else to say about the music except that it is very good.

As for the voiceovers, they are almost perfect. Each character has a very fitting voice, and that's really all I have to say about that.

The sound effects are... well, they're alright. The sound effect for when Tak hits things with his weapon is kind of strange. It sounds too heavy for how small Tak's club/staff is.

GAMEPLAY: 1/10
Awww, can I please give it a zero? PLEASE? It really deserves a zero. Yeah, this game is almost unplayable. I don't know how to explain it... where do I begin? Everything is bad! Well, I guess I'll start with the combat.

It is literally impossible to fight anything in this game without taking any damage. You can stand around and wait for the nerbils to come up to you so you can smack 'em with your club, or you can run into a group of them with your club constantly swinging. It doesn't matter. No matter what, those little pests will ALWAYS damage you. There's no way to beat them without taking damage. The combat in this game is just broken beyond belief. Oh, and I should also mention how Tak swings his club. He just twitches it and it makes a little "whoosh" sound. It doesn't look like he puts any effort into it. His arm just flicks and his club goes with it.

Then there's the jumping. Tak does a generic double jump when he's holding his club, and he can do a pole-vault if he's holding a staff. The double jump is just weak, and the pole-vault sends you flying up into the air. It seems like the jumping system should work, but somehow I can't land most of the jumps I perform. Also, it's really awkward to jump out of the water. Tak just flies out as if he got shot out of a cannon or something.

What else can you do in this game? Oh, you can mess with animals. There are many moments in this game where you have to use or manipulate an animal in a certain way to get past a certain point. Most of the time you'll be carrying sheep and using them as a disguise to get past guards or rams. There are also some moments in the game where you have to throw coconuts at a monkey to get him to blame it on "The animal that was closest to him" and throw a coconut at whatever animal that was. There are many more different animal puzzles in this game, and it would take me a while to describe them all. I'd just like to sum it up by saying that you'll find the animal puzzles everywhere and that they make up a majority of the game. However, they are a chore to accomplish and are never fun... ever.

Another thing I should mention is that you get to ride a rhino in this game. However, riding things isn't much fun and doesn't prove very useful. You'll also get to ride a snowboard/sandboard which is... well, it's okay. It's at least more fun than the other stuff you'll do in this game.

Well, that's most of the stuff that you can do. Now I'll get on to navigating Tak's world... it's obnoxious! Tak's village is the biggest train wreck that I have ever even tried to explore. When you start the game, you have to follow a little forest spirit to the different areas, and once the forest spirit leaves and you have to find your way back to an area you visited before, you'll have a difficult time doing so. You'll find your way to the different levels mostly by stumbling upon their entrance by accident.

As for the missions in this game, you'll do absolutely nothing but collect things. The entirety of this game is spent doing nothing but collecting, collecting, and more collecting. Perhaps the worst collecting spree in this game is when you have to collect 100 yorbels. Now, this isn't like collecting 100 notes in Banjo-Kazooie. After collecting 100 yorbels, I can say with confidence that collecting 100 notes in Banjo-Kazooie is a BLAST! The yorbels in Tak are spread across Tak's village and all of the worlds that somehow branch off of it. So, you'll have to find the entrance to each of the different worlds and collect the yorbels that are there. I must now make it clear that collecting 100 yorbels is the most insipid thing I have ever done in any video game ever. I cried when I collected the 100th yorbel, and when I took it back to wherever it had to go, I wept because this absolutely horrible game was still far from over.

I had to next go and lead some mummies out of their tombs and stand them on platforms to do... something. When I heard about this, I remembered that I had already visited the mummy tombs and found it pointless. What did I do when I visited the mummy tombs before? Well, I lead one of the mummies out of his tomb and stood him on a platform. The platform didn't seem to respond to him standing on it, so I tried to get him to follow me some more but he wouldn't do it. Then I walked up to him and started to push him and ended up pushing him right through a wall. I couldn't get him to come back through the wall, so he was stuck there... thus making this game impossible to beat.

A glitch was keeping me from beating this game. A glitch... a GLITCH! I would've had to start this absolutely horrible game all over again and go through the slow and painful torture of collecting those 100 yorbels again... because of a GLITCH! The game's own fault caused me to have to go through this faulty game all over again in order to beat it. Well, of course I never made it all the way through this game. I wasted more time on it than I should have, and I will never play it again.

OVERALL: 2/10
This game is lucky it got a 2 from me. How did it get a 2? Well, I think the humor in the game is absolutely brilliant. As for the gameplay, it's horrible. I want to sell this game, but the only problem is that I'd feel sorry for whoever bought it from me. I'd pay someone to take this game away from me, but no sum of money would ever make up for the emotional damages that this game will cause.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 06/05/09

Game Release: Tak and the Power of Juju (US, 10/15/03)