Wild Earth: African Safari

System: Wii
Developer: Super X Studios
Publisher: Majesco
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1-2

Quickly, wake up! We're in Africa! It's 6 A.M! Lions have surrounded our camp and eaten the helicopter! This… is a perfect time for me to tell you all about that tree over there. Your camera's over by those two lions chewing on Larry's corpse. Get it back and take a good shot of those leaves, this is front page material! … Why are you shaking? Are you cold?

Like most Majesco published titles, Wild Earth: African Safari has suffered a slight delay getting here (just over 10 months since its American release) but with a budget price tag hovering around the $30-$40 mark, it's nice to know some distributors will price their games accordingly. To encrust Wild Earth's goodness with even more honey and nuts, it's also a port of a PC game that came out in 2006! It apparently won some awards back then; can the Wii version win some too? Oh my… no.

This is a very unique game, essentially playing out like an interactive documentary. A free roaming Pokémon Snap, if you will. Just without the ability to throw apples at Slowpoke's crotch. Working for the ‘Wild Earth' magazine, you'll be armed with a camera as you go hiking around Africa, getting up close and personal with the wildlife. Two other invisible people follow you around, spewing forth information non-stop. They'll even teach you about elephant crap. No, really. One of the very first objectives is to ‘locate the elephant dung'. Did you know an elephant will excrete around 150kg of it every day? You do now!

The game is played from a first person perspective, with the Nunchuck's analog stick used to move and the Wii Remote to look around. Reaction time is a lot slower than the average first person shooter on Wii, but then, taking a photo of a turtle in the mud isn't quite the same as shooting an angry man with a machine gun. The controls are perfectly suited to the relaxed gameplay. Your camera can be zoomed in and out with either the – and + buttons on the Wii Remote or the C and Z buttons on the Nunchuck. It's equipped with an Action Replay that offers an unlimited amount of film, so feel free to spam the A button and launch an all-out assault of photography-related rage.


The levels are quite huge, offering plenty of land to trek across. While you're free to stumble off anywhere (that isn't blocked by an invisible barrier that can lead to amusing glitches such as possessed midair dancing), your two best ghost friends will typically guide you along a set path. Scripted events are triggered as you progress, which bring about new objectives to capture on film. There's usually a main one along with many optional requests. "Take a photo of this flower!"

Just for an example, there's one part where you'll come across some baby giraffes relaxing in the shade. All of a sudden an evil gang of hyenas will skateboard onto the scene, hurling those little red hotels from Monopoly at them whilst laughing through megaphones. Get some good photos of all this, step-by-step. Then, oh man, that rock over there, it's incredible. An entire article could be written about this. Take at least eighty shots of it – every possible angle. Get inside the rock. Be the rock.

In order to complete each level, you'll need to meet the required amount of points. You'll earn one for each successful photo. It's pretty difficult to actually fail, considering there are so many optional targets you'll walk past along the way. They're lengthy; lasting upwards of half an hour each. With no mid-level saving, this is something you definitely can't play in short bursts, although it's really not intended for that anyway.

The game's extremely generous with the actual photos, you don't need to be fancy with them. Just as long as you get the objective within the frame - even just part of it - everything will be okay. While you can't die, the mission will end if you keep trying to piss the animals off by getting too close. They'll start attacking, which is amusing to witness, but your 'impact meter' will quickly begin to drop. If it gets into the red area, that's it; game over. It'll restore itself over time, but there can be frustrating moments. During the second level the meter dropped abruptly, and I had no idea why until it was too late. I was standing on a frog.


The missions are very entertaining; you'll learn a fair bit from the two mysterious tour guides. They're fun to listen to, often cracking (hit-or-miss) jokes every now and then to keep it from feeling too serious. An edutainment game that actually works! Perhaps Mario should have another crack at this sort of thing, who wouldn't love another Mario's Time Machine? Everyone, that's who. The atmospheric music also fits in nicely, performed by Talking Drum Records exclusively for the game.

Alas, all is not well with Wild Earth. While the controls have naturally transferred over well, the graphics have suffered a fatal blow. The engine just can't seem to cope – ever. There's a shocking amount of pop-up, sometimes trees and rocks don't appear until you've actually walked into them and started to wonder why you're not moving anymore. The frame rate is a nightmare, too. It really hurts the overall experience, as this game is all about trying to lose yourself in its virtual world. Unless the real Africa actually does stutter and suffer from screen-tearing. That'd... that'd be pretty amazing.


Score: 6/10 - "Try/Rent"
An interesting and informative title that could have seriously benefited from a lot more polish. The entire game can be completed in the space of a few hours, so it'd be a worthwhile rental. Hey Sony, localise Afrika/Hakuna Matata already!

Review by Lance McGill (Infernal Monkey)