Amazing Island
Amazing Island is neither Amazing nor an Island. Discuss.
Tags: Amazing Island Categories: Game Cube Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Brian Arnold on Nov 8th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazing Island (title page) | 1 - 4 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Party | No | ||
Amazing Island has been described by Sega as “Pokemon meets Mario Party”. I enjoy Pokemon, and I enjoy Mario Party, but I didn’t particularly enjoy Amazing Island. There are certain elements from each of the games, but not the winning parts. This time, mixing methods wound up producing a mediocre game. However, if you’re not of age to drive, you might actually enjoy this game.
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The story starts as you, a small blue-haired child who is pure of heart, being transported to Amazing Island to battle the Black Evil, which has made the natives look mildly evil, but still really cute. You help purify a native right off, then you go speak to the king of the island who asks for your help. Once you agree, you get whisked away to create your monster (Pokemon-like element) that you’ll use to battle from here out, which you can deck out with some accessories. The battles consist of simple minigames (Mario Party-like element) that increase in difficulty from being really easy to fairly easy.
Creating a monster is actually a bit of fun. You start with a basic frame, and then draw some shapes over different body segments to flesh it out a bit. Once you’ve built out the body, you can tweak eyes, horns, colors, and accessories to your heart’s content. At the outset, there aren’t too many options, but more unlock as you go, allowing for more customization later on. If you don’t feel up to the customization process, you can go through a series of questions and have a monster created for you.
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Once you have the monster, it’s time to go and fight. You walk about the island and find minigames to play. As you beat your opponents, more areas unlock to walk to, which have more minigames. Repeat for awhile. It’s fun for a little bit, but the amount of joy derived from each minigame diminishes quickly. Some games are very straight forward, but others can be a bit confusing, and the amount of direction that the game provides can be annoying at points. As you proceed, some minigames get repeated, but with variants on the rules of the game, or with the characters involved. It doesn’t really keep it that fresh, but it was a good effort.
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Amazing Island offers up a Gamecube-Game Boy Advance link option, allowing you to move your monster onto the GBA and battle the CPU there, or in the extremely rare event, to battle other people’s monsters on their GBA. The GBA play feels very much like a Collectible Card Game at that point. If you like CCGs, great! If not, well, don’t bother hooking up.
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Visually, the game is very bright and vivid. The character models are all very cartoony, but it’s certainly in-line with the theme of the game. Primary colors are used rather heavily. I had a child do some test playing, who was about 7, and he loved it. He kept commenting on how pretty everything was, and he thoroughly enjoyed it. The visuals were very catching to him. He’s the target market, so that’s a big plus for this game. The sounds are pretty decent too, for this sort of game. There’s nothing too catchy, but it’s certainly entertaining to the younger market. Everything makes really cute sounds, even the evil stuff.
This game is great – if you’re a child. I can see how it would have a lot of appeal to kids. There’s no significant violence in any way, shape, or form. If I had a child, I would completely approve of them playing this game. However, for the most dominant gaming market of men aged 18-49, this game really offers nothing at all. It’s a novelty at best.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Simple control schemes + Lots of eye candy for children + Creating a monster can be a bit of fun |
5.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Lack of instruction at points - Can be repetitive - GBA linkup seems to be an afterthought, second-rate content toy |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you're a parent of a young child, this game is a great game. There's little educational value, but they could easily invest a few hours into it and have fun. However, if you're an adult gamer, don't waste your time. Seriously. | |
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Tags: Amazing Island
Posted by Brian Arnold on Nov 8th, 2004 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
