Genre : Video Game
Publisher: THQ
Players: 1-2
Retail Price: $40 (Wii), $20 (PS2)
Availability: Wii, Playstation 2
Though I was unfamiliar with Tak before jumping into Guardians of Gross, he’s had a fairly storied history. Nickelodeon worked with THQ to develop Tak and the Power of Juju before turning the main character into a Nicktoon. This is his fifth game, including the concurrently released Tak: Mojo Mistake for the DS (for which we’ll have a review soon).
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the game, as it’s obviously aimed for a younger audience. Despite this, I was fairly impressed at the level of quality from the gameplay: it’s mostly standard platforming fare, but it’s a solid experience. Most of the innovation comes from the Z/R1 button (for Wii and PS2, respectively), which is the parkour-like trigger: leap over small obstacles, climb up a wall, do a wall run over a chasm or flip over an enemy to attack them from behind.
The combat is where Guardians of Gross shows that it’s made for a younger audience: as far as I can tell, it’s impossible to die. Sure, you can miss a jump and be sent back to the last patch of terra firma you were on, but you can let enemies wail on you for as long as you’d like to no ill effect beyond the loss of your juju meter. Fill up the meter and you can unleash a Juju Nova, which is a Final Fantasy-like minicutscene that destroys all the onscreen enemies in a satisfying blast.
Tak is given the job of cleaning the temple, and tries to take a shortcut that results in the release of four ‘Grosstrosities’ that have wonderfully punny names (my favorite of which being Gorgonzilla the cheese monster). Some of the levels seem to have been inspired by Shadow of the Colossus, with the area you’re running on being made of the boss itself. The game knows its audience and plays to it well: there’s plenty of gross-out humor, with burps, farts and boogers galore.
To defeat each Grosstrosity you need to use a different form of juju: debris, slime, cheese and wind (farting). The cheese juju really had nothing to do with cheese (instead it was a switch between blue and green ‘cheese’ that would make parts of the level appear and disappear), but it was still enjoyable to hear Tak yell names of cheese as he used his magic. Even beyond the different jujus, there was a surprising amount of variety in the gameplay. The game is, at various times, a platformer, rail shooter, driving game and minigame collection.
The gameplay itself doesn’t always work, though. It seems hard to find a review of a platformer that doesn’t complain about the camera, and Guardians of Gross is no exception. Even in the dual-analog PS2 version there’s no way to manually control the camera, which changes based on where you are rather than what you’re doing. It cut abruptly from a behind view to a side shortly before a wall jump, which made it hard to gauge where I had to run. The separated Wii controller could further complicate things for younger players with smaller hands, as most of the action is controlled with the nunchuck.
You won’t get much playing time out of the main story: I was able to get through it in under four hours. Granted, I’m over a decade older than the target audience, but even younger players will probably be able to finish it fairly quickly. Once you complete the minigame to unlock each level of juju it can be played with another person, and each level can be replayed to try to find the eight Nunu pieces that unlock concept art. The concept art itself is a challenge, as it’s presented as a nine-piece slider puzzle, but unless you’re dedicated to unlocking everything you won’t have much of a reason to extend your playing time after completion.
Tak and the Guardians of Gross does exactly what it sets out to do: it’s an unassuming platformer that appeals to a younger crowd. If you go in expecting to be wowed then you’ll be disappointed, but what’s there is fairly enjoyable, even if there isn’t as much of it as I’d like. Some of the humor is legitimately funny, even to a jaded old man of 24 like myself. The pricing is odd, though: the PS2 version is half the price of the Wii, and with the exception of a few tacked on motion controls and using the remote instead of the left stick to aim shots is exactly the same. If you or someone you know is a fan of the Tak series then you could go far more wrong than to play this game.
