Reviews  |  Lindbergh

Let's Go Jungle! Lost on the Island of Spice

By Alex Kierkegaard / September 26, 2007

It's a rare game that makes me smile these days but when I first played this kooky light gun shooter I was smiling ear-to-ear. That first credit at least was loads of fun -- I lost half my life bar before I even knew the game had started.

I guess I was distracted with observing my surroundings. You are in this cabinet shaped like a cross between a minivan and a jeep, sitting on a bench across from a huge LCD screen, a pair of machine guns mounted on a raised platform in front of you. It feels as if you've stepped inside a private theater -- there are even curtains you can draw across the entrance; and once the action starts, and the small cabinet fills with bright light from the LCD and booming noises from the sound system, you could be miles away from the arcade, anywhere in the world. Anywhere the game chose to take you, at any rate.

This is part of the power of the arcade experience, and when it's done well (as in the recent Senjou no Kizuna, of which I've written before) it's something else alright.

But this expensive setup is wasted here, because the somewhat retardedly-named Let's Go Jungle! is nothing more than a simplistic light gun shooter mixed in with a bunch of random QTEs. There's a so-called 'Action Button' (hi tim!) mounted next to each player's machine gun, which you are asked to press at certain points according to on-screen indications. Sometimes you need to mash it hard; other times you have to carefully time a single press, and there are even QTEs involving the machine gun: point it to the left to steer the jeep in that direction, et cetera. QTEs have always been stupid action devices, but when you see them shoved in a game in such an indiscriminate, hamfisted way you can be sure that the developers were trying to cover something up.

What they were trying (and inevitably failing) to cover up in this case is brain-dead game design. Since you are given unlimited ammo with no need for reloading, and since there's no pedal to add an extra layer of complexity (as in many modern light gun shooters), they had to give you something more to worry about, or else gunning down endless hordes of enemies would get old quick.

The end result? The whole damn game, QTEs included, gets old quick -- like three-four credits quick. You are bound to enjoy your first couple of credits, as I did -- especially if you've been previously playing such demanding shooters as Time Crisis 4 or The House of the Dead 4 -- you'll just feel good letting loose on a bunch of giant spiders without having to worry about running out of ammo. And the theme-park-ride feel of the speeding jeep and cool recoil action of the gun will put a smile on your face, guaranteed. But the fun is over once you get off that jeep after the fight with the first boss. The rest of the game feels like one long, boring jungle stage filled with generic mutated-animal enemies and cheap gimmickry (at one point you have to hit giant frogs on the head with a canoe paddle!) and not a single memorable setpiece. And it looks like pap, with crude character models and low-polygon environments garishly tarted up by a thick layer of glossy, high-res polish (think Dead or Alive 4, only shit).

The thing with this game is that it's targeted to couples of casual gamers. The storyline involves a young couple that goes on a tour of a remote island in an effort to patch up their strained relationship, but wind up instead having to fend off giant insects. In two-player mode you get bonus points for 'rescue shots' when you save your partner, and the two of you have to cooperate to make it past certain QTEs, with each successful rescue shot/cooperative action earning you a 'heart'. At the end of each stage these are tallied up to give you a 'compatibility rating'. These little additions to the standard light gun formula would perhaps have been worthwhile if the rest of the game was good, but since it isn't they make no difference.

Is anyone playing this game? It would appear so. A friend of mine from the States reports that at his local GameWorks (which is located in a mall) it's currently one of the most popular titles: aside from the usual crowds around DDR and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 he says it's the only game that's never empty, and occasionally he even sees lines. So that's the kind of arcade that's buying this thing: casual arcades need casual games. You think I am spinning this the wrong way? Just consider that the high-score table has 100 places...

So this is by far the worst and worst-looking Lindbergh title yet. It's kind of embarassing for me, really -- until recently I was telling everyone that the Lindbergh is the current-gen system with the best ratio of great to crap games (they are all great, basically, perhaps with the exception of Ami-Gyo), and here I am wrapping up my review of its first stinker. I guess it had to happen eventually, eh? (The Lindbergh getting its first stinker not me wrapping up my review, smartass.)

Note that I played the deluxe version of the game; the standard version is a fairly basic upright cabinet with a much smaller screen (32 inches instead of 62), probably not even worth the couple of credits I'd recommend dropping in the deluxe one.