Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi
Being both a girl game and good is as doable as rocking hard while being cutesy
Tags: Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi Categories: GBA Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Lisa Peterson on Jan 4th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Other | No | ||
 |
There’s something strangely narcissistic about games starring musicians as themselves. Reaching all the way back to the Atari title Journey Escape, they always seem to involve dodging droves upon droves of love-crazed fans while at the same time having crazy sci-fi inspired adventures where the heroes save the world or something… while in real life these people are charging fifty bucks for autographs and whining to their personal assistants that their bottled water is the wrong brand. It’s almost like these games show us these musicians as they see themselves. Somehow, it does’t seem like too much of a stretch that Michael Jackson imagines himself shooting lightning bolts out of his hands like he does in the Moonwalker game on the Genesis…
Anyways, so Ami and Yumi, the “real-life successful pop duo” and stars of the Cartoon Network TV show this game is based on, appear in this game naturally anime-esque in style, and have that whole girly-girl cutesy thing going while at the same time trying to send out the whole “but us girls can rock as hard as any guy!” vibe that ABC’s friday night sitcoms have been spewing since time immemorial. This would seem like the same vibe that has white pre-teen girls exclaiming “You go, girl!” and “That’s right, sistah!”
 |
The girls’ quest in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Kaznapped is to save their manager from a rabid fan, while satiating the many crazed fans and photographers they cross along the way (wink, wink) while fighting off a strange little army of robots (nudge, nudge). This comes in the form of a platformer, and while it’s not particularly bad, it’s not particularly great, either.
Ami and Yumi each have different abilities, with Ami being the cutesy one that’s good at jumping and Yumi being the tough, “mean” one (the term used extremely liberally here) that’s better at fighting, breaking stuff and pushing heavy boxes. The two characters have enough differences to make each very unique, and so it is that as you go through levels you’ll find yourself switching back and forth between them countless times to solve puzzles and get past obstacles. In fact, this can get a bit annoying, as there’s a breif pause every time you switch.
 |
Also a bit annoying is the fact that while there are countlesss enemies in the game, Ami and Yumi don’t have a particularly good means to fend them off. The game discourages you from attacking fans and photographers by deducting points when you do, and while you can stun them by having either girl breifly perform a song for them, the effect lasts only a few seconds before they start back up again. Other enemies can be attacked with Ami’s mic or Yumi’s guitar, but the mic doesn’t really seem to do any damage, and the guitar has to be very close to hit and it generally takes multiple hits to bring down any enemy, meaning you’ll often take damage while just trying to get past simple enemies. Adding to these problems are a repetitive and slow-paced level design that seems really cramped, often making progress a boring process of just getting to the next task.
Between these levels the action is broken up by side-scrolling shooter stages in the girls’ tour bus (which flies, naturally), which are decent enough albeit extremely easy. These stages end with a boss that you generally just have to wear down while avoiding its simple attack pattern. Nothing special here.
 |
Graphically, the game looks interesting enough, and while it doesn’t do anything particularly amazing it’s at least colorful with nice character designs and decent animation. The sound ain’t bad either, and although we’re still talking nothing exceptional for the GBA, the soundtrack is decent too. Mostly, the presentation does what it sets out to do.
Unfortunately, what it sets out to present…. is a girl game. And as much as these girls act like rock stars and wave around their guitar and microphone like status symbols, they’re just a lightweight substitute for the real thing, and in much the same way, so is the game. It seems to think it’s cool like Mario or Sonic, but all that’s there to back it up is fluff and “style”. So while this isn’t a bad platformer, it’s nothing a guy would really want to play, or any girl who takes her games seriously for that matter. I guess you could say…. Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Kaznapped is the Hillary Duff of GBA platformers.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Bright, colorful graphics + Both characters are unique, with a decent assortment of abilities |
7.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Fighting enemies too frustrating - Repetitive, annoying, and often constrictive level design - Side-scrolling shooter stages too easy |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| These girls play okay, but they don't rock, although they don't seem to know that. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi
Posted by Lisa Peterson on Jan 4th, 2006 and is filed under GBA 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.
