|
|
Epic Adventures: La Jangada
|
|
|
|
|
|
Graphics & Sound:
The graphics in Epic Adventures: La Jangada are a mixed bag; while the scenes of the Amazon River are quite beautiful and entrancing and the characters are attractive, there is an odd, "uncanny valley" quality to their eyes. Something's just not quite right, almost as if they are looking through you. Aside from that, the areas you'll be exploring are drawn such that items are really difficult to locate. There may be a tiny ring hidden somewhere that won't be at all obvious to the player, or a piece of paper hidden behind a pot. In a scene at a church, you are required to locate a series of symbols. That's all it said. I didn't see anything that looked out of the ordinary and had no idea what I was looking for. Additionally, the area was incredibly dark, so spotting a symbol was damn near impossible. As it turns out, the symbols were well hidden and were anything from a lightning bolt to waves. Just a little information as to what I was looking for would have been greatly appreciated. For a hidden object adventure, it is key that items be recognizable and able to be spotted without the help of using the Hint button on a regular basis or tapping all over the screen, but that is what I resorted to in La Jangada.
There's really no background music unless you are in a menu screen. Instead, there are ambient sounds like birds chirping, various scurrying sounds made by animals, or water dripping or sloshing. At one point somewhere in the middle, there's a puzzle that, when completed, plays a beautiful song. Since nothing in the game is timed, I actually listened to it for a while, because it was so lovely. But alas, that's about it for music. On the other hand, the voices are ok, but since they are saying different things than are written on the screen in text, it was highly annoying and I opted just to read them quickly and press the Next button. Unfortunately, this sentiment is echoed throughout most of the game. |
|
|
Gameplay:
Epic Adventures: La Jangada is a hidden object adventure based on a book by famed author Jules Verne. You play Minha, a lovely young girl in Peru who will be traveling with her betrothed, Dr. Manuel Valdez, to Brazil for her wedding. Their journey takes them down the Amazon River in an amazing boat called the La Jangadam, but it is here where their troubles begin. Minha's father is accused of murder and taken into custody upon their arrival to Brazil and Minha suspects the boat's guide and captain, Torres. It will be up to Minha, Manual and her brother, Benito to clear their father's name and track down Torres before the Judge sentences him for murder.
You'll go between hidden object scenes and mini-game puzzles, collecting objects to help further the story and clear your father. The trouble is the hidden object screens aren't very visually appealing and they just aren't fun. In fact, I discovered pretty quickly in my frustration to find one last object on a page that there is no penalty for tapping an incorrect area. The levels were so tedious that I ended up clearing a good many of them by simply tapping all over to pick up the required objects, mainly because I gave up on looking for them and lost interest. Still other hidden object scenes require you to put things back in their proper places, but they don't instruct you to do that after the first time you encounter a scene like that, so you may spend the first few seconds on a new scene trying to pick up objects, until you realize you have to pick them up and place them somewhere else. The puzzles are things such as opening a series of boxes by placing the correct series of keys inside based on the picture on the box; reconstructing a picture; spotting the differences in scenes; and spotting the important words on a document. You do have the option to skip a mini-game puzzle, but I only did this once, on a tedious puzzle where you had to move tiles about to reconstruct a picture of a snake and skull.
|
|
|
Difficulty:
Epic Adventures: La Jangada doesn't penalize you for tapping in the wrong place and it provides an ample Hint system. In fact, you can tap your finger all over the screen to pick up items, essentially ignoring the list altogether. You can skip puzzles after a few minutes, if you don't want to complete them, so naturally, the game is fairly easy, at least it can be. But easy isn't necessarily good and Epic Adventures: La Jangada just wasn't fun for me. I typically love hidden object games, but when it's easier to breeze through the levels without thinking about them, something is definitely wrong.
|
|
|
Game Mechanics:
Epic Adventures: La Jangada uses tapping for everything, as most hidden object games do. Control is pretty simple and easy to use and, as I said earlier, there's no penalty for missteps. The issues that cause La Jangada to falter are in the fact that it just isn't that much fun to play. The cut scenes are incredibly long - so long that my iPad screen goes black as I watch them and I have to tap to keep it from going into hibernation. I eventually eliminated this problem when I quit watching them and advanced them using the Next key. I primarily did this because of the hibernation issue, but also the translation issue. Additionally, while reading the text, a dash was used instead of an apostrophe. It might seem minor, but it was annoying and another sign of QA not catching translation issues. Also, the name of the murder victim was Fabiano or Fibiano, depending on where it was mentioned in the game. As an editor, things kinds of things really stand out to me.
Overall, I just wasn't a fan of Epic Adventures: La Jangada. I hate to disparage a game, because I know the developers spent a lot of time making it, but I just didn't find it fun and it was more of a chore to me. Typically, I breeze through hidden object games in a few days, but this one took me 2 weeks because I just really didn't want to go back to it, even though I eventually beat it. Do try the game before you buy to see if you will like it. While it has a more relaxing pace than most games, I just wasn't a fan.
|
|
|
-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
|
Related Links:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
