Customer Reviews

Afrika

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to admit, I was a little worried that this game would be somewhat like, well, what many people write it off as being, without giving it a second look, and that is boring and pointless. After playing it, I am relieved that it is such a good experience for anyone interested in wildlife cinematography and photography.

For those of you interested in photography, here's a little insight into the level of sophistication the game has to offer. The game allows you to accumulate and upgrade cameras and purchase lenses. It does a great job of creating depth of field changes with aperture settings, and you have shutter speed settings that affect exposure and motion blur as in real world cameras, and there are priority modes or even full manual settings that can be played around with, with realistic results in your photographs. There is enough devotion to real life photgraphy put into the development of Afrika to make it a gem on that premise alone.

Here's a tip to keep in mind -- patience is rewarded, as you will realize that the new cameras and lenses you unlock and purchase are dramatically improving the quality of your photos. The beginning camera takes lousy pictures and it would be sad if people didn't realize that the game intends the quality to start out poor, just like in the real world starting out with cheap cameras.

As the game begins, you choose your character and start out at base camp with a laptop, camera, binoculars and GPS. You get emailed requests to take specific types of pictures and you are on your way, driving here and there with a guide. Gameplay is more like an animal watching sim than anything else. While there is no hardcore gaming action going on here, there are grand moments in the game such as photographing a mother elephant with her calf in a herd, driving alongside a cheetah, getting attacked by an African Bufffalo ... damn those African Buffalos .... they attacked me over and over again. Unfortunately, when you are attacked, the animal charges at you (many different animals can attack you) but before any kind of contact is made, the screen fades, and you are sent back to Base Camp to start your daily safari all over again. So there is no real violence, just the implication of it.

After a few missions, you eventually lose the guide and drive yourself to wherever you want to go. You can buy a tent and camp out in other areas, away from your base camp, if you decide to not return to base camp when the sun sets.

The graphics are superb and do justice to the 720p display but can be a little overly sharpened on the trees and foliage at times, giving it a less real look and more "video game" look. Distant vistas and mountains look great, the animals look great also and are animated well enough that you feel like you are around real wild animals. The animals look fantastic through the binoculars and it is pleasing that the camera work progresses toward that quality you see through the binoculars as you upgrade your gear.

The sounds of the animals are authentic and very well done. Just playing the game brings the sounds of the outdoors into your home.

The music is mostly grand orchestral and for the most part is very cinematic and movie-like large, but at times is African light melody.

Sunsets and sunrises are cool looking but kind of foggy at times.

There are a few activities to choose from within the main menu. You can start or continue your "Safari", which is the main game mode, allowing you to progress through the game. There is also a "big game trophy" mode that allows you to replay the more exciting photo shoots you unlock. Having this mode is really nice. There is a built in National Geographic library of real life photographs and information that unlocks and expands as you encounter each animal. There is also an environment "viewer" that allows you to play customized video clips that showcase each area and the animals that inhabit it.

You also have your photo library on your in-game laptop. This is where all of your pictures get stored and you can sort through them, delete them, play a slide show ... etc.

If you can picture yourself enjoying wildlife photography, then I would imagine you would like Afrika quite a bit. If the idea of that sounds boring, then I would bet you would find the game lacking.

I've never written a review on Amazon before for any item. I feel incredibly compelled to do so for this game, "Afrika". A lot of reviews from "gaming" websites and magazines have given this experience a less than favorable score for it's gameplay. Folk's, let me make this short and sweet. There is a wealth of information on the animals you will encounter during this game that is presented in an easy to use an entertaining fashion within the software. The graphics on each animal are top notch and the sound makes you feel as if you were indeed in Africa. If you enjoy exploring the world's creatures from within your living room, (with a beverage of your choice, for relaxing...hint...is this thing on?) then purchase this title and help to ensure another one will follow. I've been a gamer since the days of Pong, (ok, so I'm not in my 20's, jeeze!) so please trust in my opinion that if you want the experience that you hope this is, you will get it in spades. Do not believe these websites that seem to have one type of gamer review every type of game. Rant over!! Thanks for reading!

Hello all, well ill get a few things out of the way, i like action adventure games with or without the blood is fine by me, i also like shooters and survival horror (just read all my reviews). When i first heard about afrika back when the ps3 was just launching i thought "wow that sounds dumber than all hell" and it kinda slipt my mind for along time. One day while trying to get demons souls imported i came upon a deal of buy 3 get free shipping (seeing as how the were coming from asia couldnt pass up) so i got demons souls (fantastic) ratchet and clank quest for booty (on a disc and in english) and Hakuna Matata (afrika). At the time i picked these up the only one definetly coming to the u.s. was ratchet so i figured what the heck if i didnt like afrika id sell it. well this game is not leaving my collection.

the pros are

+graphics are really good
+gameplay is rewarding
+its a relaxing break from violence

the cons are

-no voice whatsoever
-none violent (a monkey ran infront of my jeep and brought me to a dead stop)
-if you dont like animals or photography its not for you.

those are the majors for me but i look at it like this,

sometimes i can only play while kids are sleeping and you dont need the sound for this.
my daughter like to watch me play and she is learning from the info in this game as am i.
again no violence means i can play while they watch.

overall i think its a fantastic experience and while it isnt my most favorite game atm i do put it in regularly to relax and unwind. Usually i go on a safari a day at least.

p.s. patience is a virtue in this game, youll see.

This is such a classy and well done title. Playing this game is almost like watching a National Geographic documentary. You accept jobs via email from magazines on your handy laptop. (Take a picture of a hippo with it's mouth open, take a picture of a zebra head on, etc...) You are then paid based on how good the picture is. Closeness, focus, centered all figure into the judging. You have to be careful, many animals will charge and trample you!!!
It is both beautiful and fun, even if you're watching someone else play. Highly recommended.

Everyone is different... I have "Endless Ocean" for the Wii. I loved the game and highly recommended it to friends... Funny, they all hated it. "You can't kill anything! All you do is swim around and take pictures", was the reply. I laughed and shrugged my shoulders.

...Got the same response with this game. I don't care, what people say... I enjoy it!!!

It's easy to get caught up in the scenery, and suddenly remember, "Oh, right I'm supposed to be taking pictures". If you love the feeling of exploration (what's around the next corner), taking pictures and enjoying a game at a more relaxed pace? Then, look no further!

Afrika it's probably one of the most underrated games for the last three years. The effort the developers put on this game it's unbelievable, the animals look and move so real, it seems like they use real animals for mo-cap. One of the things that I thought I was going to find on this game it's the animals walking and doing the exactly same thing as the others, but for my surprise I found the animals behaving so randomly, there's zebra walking, other drinking, other eating, others looking on all kind of positions and so on, it's so natural and if you drive towards them, they run on every direction, but they never follow a certain pattern that you can expect with many animals on screen (I gave the example of a zebra, but it's like this with every animal on the game, except one, I'm not saying which, but this animal has a few hundreds on screen at once).
It took me almost 38 hours to complete, but I cheated at the end to get my Platinum trophy, I was ready to go on my last major mission and still hadn't find all the animals (I thought the game was gonna end after that mission), so I looked on a guide online, but only to find out that even after you finish your last major mission and beat the game, you still go back to the camp after the credits and you can find the rest of the animals and finish the lesser important missions that you left behind. So, don't cheat, okay?

I'm hoping for a sequel, maybe on Amazon. Also, they could make a Jurassic Park just like this, sending you back to the island to photograph the Dinosaurs to see how they are doing and get missions just like Afrika. But it's unlikely, because it got such poor reviews among critics and not to mention poor sales (mostly because of the critics reviews).

P.S. English not my primary language. Sorry if there's switched words or something.

This game has a lot to offer, though I would stress that it's less of a game and more of a nature photography simulation.

I also got this game on sale for $30, so I cut it a lot of slack I probably wouldn't cut it if I had paid full price.

Afrika throws you into a pretty diverse & expansive natural preserve and asks you to complete various photo assignments, while rewarding you with credits you can use to purchase additional camera gear within the Sony Alpha line. It's actually pretty enjoyable if you know what you're getting into.

The game starts very slowly. The gameplay is tedious and the mechanics are pretty clunky. There is no way to fast-travel, so much of your time is spent speeding around in a jeep with poor physics. Run into a tree or an animal? You'll go from 50kmh to 0 in an instant. The scenery, however, is beautiful. So traveling isn't always bad, just repetitive. The game also has trouble deciding whether or not to hold your hand. Some assignments basically just involve waiting through a jeep ride and pointing your camera towards the animal they just drove you to. Other times, you can get stuck because you didn't notice a tiny animal in an area you haven't been to in 3 hours. The photography is a little unrealistic at times. Depth-of-Field is seemingly constant, regardless of the distance to the subject (So you can usually get the same DOF of an elephant 150 ft. away as you can with a lizard 10 ft. away, which definitely wouldn't be the case in reality). It's important to understand that the gameplay itself is pretty sloppy.

If all of that doesn't scare you away, here's what the game does right. It's actually pretty immersive and relaxing. The animals and scenery are beautifully rendered. After the tedious first hour or two, the game really does open up. New animals show up as missions are completed, causing the world to seem empty at first, but slowly team with life. There's a terrific sense of accomplishment when you take a great photo in this game. A novice photographer will also better understand photographic principles by playing this game. These might not sound like big positives, but the sense of accomplishment and discovery outweigh the gameplay mechanics for me.

Overall, getting a great shot of a baboon and its baby is satisfying enough to keep playing a game with this many flaws. If you liked Planet Earth then you'll almost surely enjoy the assignments in this game. The in-game Field Guide offers a lot of information about each animal and would teach younger gamers plenty about the African wilderness.

Get this game if you're really into the natural world, or really into photography, but don't mind wasting time with clunky mechanics in between taking pictures.

Somebody as Natsume seriously needs to stand up to management and tell them what 'fun' is. Everything about this game drags. The movement is sluggish, the menus are sluggish. Game saves take about 2 minutes. Saved photographs appear about 1/3 of the screen size and cannot be enlarged or zoomed. No thoughtful collision detection among the animals, either. They threw alot of money at studying film footage of real animals, with the downside that all the animal movements seem limited to a 2D (film) scheme with no forethought about 3D collision detection. All the animals in the game do awkward headbutts with eachother, where one will keep moving in the direction it was going, while the other remains stuck, uselessly moving it's legs; realism- zero. The fact that the environments are mostly flat and undetailed doesn't sell photorealism, either. Photography enthusiasts will presumably enjoy the detail of having real SONY cameras to choose from, as well as the National Geographic seal of approval, what value they have in terms of gameplay I don't know.

The gameplay: finding a spot and wait.
If you run or shift your position, any animal close to you will startle and run, but stay still for a few seconds and you're completely invisible again. An animal will walk toward you, you wait for it's behaviors to cycle to the one you're trying to 'get', take picture.

The problem is that different animal behaviors are only unlocked as you get photo assignments to photograph a particular behavior... in other words, the Hippos won't yawn until you take the 'photograph the hippo yawning' mission. The cheetah won't attack it's prey until you pick the 'photograph the cheetah attacking it's prey' mission. This wouldn't be a big deal if movement was fast, which it's not. There no Zip or Goto Area function; everytime you want to proceed to an area you've already been, it's a slow jeep drive across the same flat, uneventful terrain, and everytime you do, the ingame music goes on, an over the top 'Jurassic park'-ish theme, that clashes hard with the mood of thoughful photography.

Natsume would have done well to examine what worked about the gameplay structure in Pokemon Snap! or the photography segments in Beyond Good & Evil, or how African environments were rendered in FarCry2.

As it is, Afrika succeeds neither as a game, nor as a simulation, because it's neither fun, nor realistic. It doesn't even have that 'not great but had potential' vibe going for it. It's just bad.

Afrika for PS3 is the absolute best video game I have ever played. I do not like video games too much, I lose interest quickly, but my husband is an obsessive video gamer with multiple systems and internet play...
With that being said be BOTH LOVED this game! It was something we could play together that never got old. We were obsessive about it, until we beat it in a week or two, but it would be a lot of fun to play all the way through again, and again, and again.

This is a game which would be fun for the whole family, especially if you are into animals and/or photography. There is a lot of reading involved, so younger kids may not understand it alone, but it is a great game to play as a family.

So many PS3 games are first-person shooter. It's a relief to have some cute animals. Despite the other reviews, I found this game to be fairly challenging. I still haven't found the baby hippo. The graphics are amazing, but they're decent enough. This is a fun game to poke around with and relax after a long day.