A great puzzle game that was released on Saturn in mid-1996 (the last
great year for creativity in videogames, as well as the year that
"Bust-A-Move 2" changed the perception of puzzle games on PlayStation),
Sega's "Baku Baku" is yet another one of the seemingly never-ending stream
of 2D puzzle games with tiles dropping from top-to-bottom that have to be
matched in pairs in order to clear the screen, preferably with a massive
chain-reaction or combo that will cause irreparable damage to your CPU or
second-player's structure. The storyline, told via a badly-compressed FMV
featuring choppy-looking CG characters that seem straight out RPG central
casting, tell the story of a spoiled Princess and her King Father's desire
to please her fetish for animals with a big Royal Zoo; a call goes to the
kingdom for contestants in the World Zookeeper Contest, which is where you
come in and play the game.
GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: B (85)
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The games "Baku Baku" resembles the most are the Nintendo SNES title
"Tetris Attack" and Capcom's cult hit "Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo", and
consists of falling pairs of tiles, featuring either a food item or the
face of an animal (or both); the default four animal/fruit choices are:
dog/bone, rabbit/carrot, panda/bamboo and monkey/banana, with an option to
add a mouse/cheese variable in harder difficulty-settings. As long as the
right combination of animal and food touch each other vertically and/or
horizontally, the tiles will disappear and will clear space for more to
follow; to do the most damage and send the more tiles to your opponent's
screen, the player must score the biggest combos possible, which takes a
keen eye and some skill in order to build potential chain reactions (that
could be messed-up if the opponent scores the combo first). The game is a
little lacking in options though: besides the Arcade trip in which you
take on CPU opponents and the head-to-head two-player option for two
players to go at it (the meat and bones of every good puzzle game, as
"SPFIITurbo" and "BAM2" veterans will verify), there is very little else
to do: no 'create your puzzle' option, no 'Variety' or 'Puzzle' option,
etc. (you do get an option to tweak the hell out of the # of chances, the
difficulty, etc.). A glaring flaw is the way the difficulty increases in
the game, going from relatively easy in the first couple of rounds to
incredibly hard/cheap/tough in anything but the Easy setting (which cuts
the game just shy of the point of frustration); tiles start dropping too
fast, and you barely have a chance to rotate them and place them before
the next one's falling... which I guess is fine because you can see the
six tiles that are about to fall (you've been warned), but frustrates and
brings down the fun of completing "Baku Baku". Little kids that might
otherwise liked this game could become easily frustrated, althoughthey
still might get a little kick out of seeing their on-screen character
loose and be eaten by a giant Lion head (cute!).
GRAPHICS / VISUALS: B- (84)
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The game's 2D artwork and artistic style seem European, although the
game was conceived and released in Japan as an arcade game (the
option/menu screens reveal this by their use of a joystick in explaining
how to play the game); the obscure 3DO side-scroller game "Soccer Kid"
came to mind when the portraits of people in the world of "Baku Baku"
(Gallopy, Nurse Grape, T3, Soldier and our heroes Poly and Gon) appeared
throughout the high-resolution menu/option screens, which are layed-out in
a no-frills manner. The lack of textures and plasticity of the look in the
CG-rendered worlds and characters (think of lifeless, dull, colorless,
stiffer-looking artwork from the likes of "Donkey Kong Country" or
"Rayman") is a sharp contrast with the vibrant 3D polygon and/or 2D
artwork I expect from a Japanese videogame developer like Sega. The
important thing in a puzzle game is that everything that needs to be seen
can be clearly identified, and that the proceeding moves exceedingly fast;
on those two issues "Baku Baku" does its job fine, if a little in the
underwhelming side.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: C- (76)
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Great sound effects are the trademark of a successful gaming franchise
(Sonic's rings, Yoshi's 'Wap-Wap Pap-Up Pop' butt sound, etc.) and "Baku
Baku" doesn't have any of them: all animals make the same munching sound
effect when they score a combo, and every sound (falling tiles, the
invisible crowd going "Awww", etc.) and music sample (lackluster and
cheesy European keyboard muzark... yuck!) is functional and crystal-clear
without being cute, enjoyable or anything remotely close to being unique.
OVERALL: B- (82)
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For $10 I think that puzzle fanatics cannot go wrong with picking up
"Baku Baku" for Saturn IF they have someone else to play it with, since
the off-the-wall escalation of the difficulty is a turn-off in the Arcade
option. I'll send it to the cousins in El Salvador that are eating up
every Saturn game I send them (while quietly begging me to send them an
N64... grrrr!), while I prepare myself for the puzzle gaming dish of the
summer of '99: "The Next Tetris" on Playstation w/ the option to use my
own music CD's. Yummy!
-
J.M.
Vargas
