Animal Kingdom: Wildlife Expedition

Everyone knows the “bargain bin” games; those cheaper titles that can be found, not only in the bargain bins of large stores, but also in cheaper stores and, sometimes, even at gas stations and the like. They’re usually pretty bad. But as I always said, just because something is inexpensive doesn’t mean that it’s trash. Hell, there are many lower-priced games that I love, either in my Wii/DS/3DS collection or on Steam. Today’s title is one of those. I’ve seen it in a lot of places, and I was intrigued.

Developer Natsume brings to us Animal Kingdom: Wildlife Expedition. Here’s another reason why I was interested in this game: It’s a photo safari game. I feel that there aren’t enough of those games out there. Hunting games are a dime a dozen (and of highly variable levels of quality, not to mention they often require accessories), but games in which you merely observe and snap photos of animals are very rare. I love Pokémon Snap and am still hoping for a proper sequel (the mini-game in Pokémon S/M/US/UM doesn’t count). However, I could settle for any game about taking photos of animals. It’s a relaxing genre.

I don’t know what to expect from this one. Might as well start the review now.

Hm. Probably an island. With animals on it. Just my guess.

After picking your character’s gender and giving them a name, you see them on the plane flying towards the island. Upon their arrival, they meet… Whoa whoa whoa!! What is that?? It looks like someone was trying to design a robotic Mayor McCheese! And failed spectacularly! This is our assistant, Stupendo, who will drive the jeep around and explain the gameplay mechanics. At camp, we have three options:

-Prepare, in which you get ready for the next day of safari;

-Rest, self-explanatory;

-And depart, which is when you leave on a trip.

Stupendo. How... How is the top half of your head literally defying
the law of gravity in order to make you speak.
Explain, you weird machine.

Cool jeep. That's what I call riding in style.

The “Prepare” option gives you access to the inventory, which contains all the items you can use on this journey as well as an index of sorts, to catalogue all the animals you’ve found. Hm, it sounds familiar. You can also look at a map of the island. Then there’s the Album option, which lets you view and save the photos you’ve taken. Last is an Options menu, standard stuff.

Stupendo then takes the player on a practice course. Stupendo will drive the jeep slowly, but you can speed it up with Z. Your roll of film is fairly limited at first (20 photos maximum), so try not to use them all too quickly. Your task is to spot leaves ruffling or dust clouds around the island, which indicates an area with animals to be found.

Thanks, Speaker of the Obvious.

However, unlike Pokémon Snap, your character gets off the jeep and must then walk towards the animals. You’re shown on a larger field, with the animals around you, minding their business. The tutorial allows you to see elephants and zebras. You’re taught to use your camera only around the zebras, however. You’re also taught to approach the animals slowly and carefully, lest you want them to flee. As you snap photos of some species of animals, they will become more familiar with you as the days go, letting you come closer to them, allowing for even better pictures to be taken.

It’s possible to look around while Stupendo is driving the jeep and find medals left by the previous photographers around the island, as well as crates containing useful items. Last but not least, sometimes you can use binoculars to spot some animal sightings or crates. To break one of those, align the pointer with it and press A repeatedly.

At the end of the day, you’re back at camp, and you can check the photos taken on that day and send up to three of them to your editor. This guy’s face… I dunno, he looks like he's about to argue at length about Star Trek.

At least he seems to be smart enough not to ask for
photos of Spider-Man.

Anyhow, he looks at the photos taken and will keep whichever ones are good enough. Each day, he will have a special request for you to fulfill (as an example, he may request a photo of a giraffe eating leaves off a tree). The scoring system here is not very precise. Unlike, say, Pokémon Snap where the Professor gave a clear score based on the position and actions of the animal photographed, among other things, here the Editor will only give a Silver or Gold “medal” to each photo he keeps. And a quick "thank you" if you’ve fulfilled the request. I was hoping there would be scores involves, so that a player would be encouraged to take better pictures that are worth more points.

Also, only three photos per day? That’s a slog to get through. Story-wise, I get it – the editor doesn’t want just any photos, don’t dump your entire stock on him. But would it have hurt to be able to send, say, five photos instead of three? Two levels in, and I’ve already seen five animals (I’ve since seen giraffes, blue gnus, and ostriches), with four in the same level! We really have to go through the safari and snap as many photos as possible, knowing we can only keep three? We’ll progress at a snail’s pace!

But hey, thankfully we can collect items during the trip, and then use them to get better images of various animals. Crates scattered around the island will let you gather extra items, such as a camo tent (useful to stay in place and snap pictures, but you can’t move while using it) or masks (the herbivore mask will let you come closer to herbivores, and the carnivore mask does the same for carnivores). Even a machine to cause rain to fall on the island! And hey, whichever items you gather during one day of photo-shoots, you’ll have for the next d…

…what do you mean, we don’t even get to keep the items found on the way? They can only be used on the day we find them? What kind of bullcrap is that? Couldn’t use that carnivore mask before you came back to camp? Too bad, it’s gone! To top it off, each item can only be used once per stop, by which I mean that when you get off your jeep, walk into nature for photos, use the item, and come back on the jeep, you lose that item and cannot use it on your next stop for pictures. You’d think a mask would be more durable than that.

The in-game progression is tied to the missions given to you by the editor and his red-nosed, zit-covered face, so you can’t go further and see more animals until you fulfill his requests. The map is fairly big, so you could fill your roll of film early on, before you saw what you were told to snap. Some missions take place in some precise areas of the island, so save your film until you reach those areas. Your equipment will eventually be upgraded as you collect medals, increasing your film to 28 photos as an example.

The Editor guy annoys me. At least he’s funny. And, you know… if I fail to get my target on a mission, I can just send him photos of an anthill or animal poop. That’ll be ranked too. You’d think he’d be more offended that you send him images of a wild animal’s pile of dung, but no, he’s cool with it. (For the record, there's a few more things he'll accept, such as boney carcasses.)

Giraffe eating? Better; Giraffes eating!

After some time, you're allowed to follow a second route that sees more watery areas, letting you take pictures of water-friendly animals. Like hippos or crocodiles. …Hey, I said water-friendly, not human-friendly. Doesn’t change much; you can still only send three photos to the Editor. Let’s hope you only took photos of animals you never saw until today! There’s a leopard out there, can you save your film to snap a picture of it? The animals appear in areas almost at random, with more showing up as you complete the Editor’s missions. It should always be possible to complete said mission on the day it’s given, but the randomness can be troublesome.

And of course, new species appear once in a while, and you may get the perfect shot for a species of animal you see less frequently – and then you remember that you can only send three photos each day. Sure, you can save as many as you want per day to your Album, even if you can only send three, so hey, maybe you can send the others on another day. That's a thing you can do.

Hey, did you know that your album could only hold 60 photos? At first, that doesn’t seem so bad. The game has a decent length and many species to catch on film. You might save 4 or 5 photos per day, maybe more if the day went really well. However, you can only send the photos you’ve saved in your album. 60 seems manageable. However, the album fills up really quickly. Sure, you can keep deleting photos, but I feel it goes against the spirit of an Album to delete so many photos constantly to make space for new ones. This album should be able to hold more pictures.

Why does every animal I bother runs away from me?

The Story Mode proper ends with the mission of finding and photographing a rare and elusive white lion. It was really difficult, and I had to search all over the island, but I eventually found it. This marks the end of the story, as the credits roll afterwards – but wait! Since your character has chosen to stay on the island for a little longer, the Editor decides to give you access to a special, secret area that contains rare animals seen nowhere else! Postgame content is always fun.

Unfortunately, here it’s somewhat lackluster. All you get to see in this bonus area is a tiger and a family of giant pandas. A short storyline follows where Stupendo and you find the baby panda alone and bring it back to camp (because that’s a good idea), then have to carry it back to its mother, and THEN go a third time because our protagonist, that genius, forgot to snap pictures of the panda family when they were reunited. And that’s about it. You don’t get a big area to explore with multiple new animal species to find; only two more. But hey, now you have the freedom of taking all the pictures you want.

And that covers it. What do I think of this game overall?

Sometimes you can just find empty photos for you to
add to your camera, one more photo for your film.

It’s actually pretty decent! You’re given a very large island to explore, with many areas to look into. It’s quite impressive to view; speeding through the island can take two minutes! I enjoy seeing the animals and their interactions, and I also enjoy taking pictures and befriending animals as time goes. Seeing the animals is great, photographing them is fun, and coming closer to them every day as you become more familiar to them is a novel, if not realistic, idea. You get some damn good snapshots that way. To be fair, the island is big, but the limited number of species (only 20) means it lacks diversity. Also, some missions require the player to reach some spots of the island, meaning you might have to speed through the first part of it past a certain point of the "story".

The characters are actually quite endearing. The Editor is ugly as Heck, but he gives me a chuckle every time I get a Gold rating on a photo. As for Stupendo, I was afraid the little robot would fall into the common trap of annoying video game helpers. Admittedly, it does have a few flaws, though some of them are linked to the gameplay mechanics – Stupendo has to tell you, every time, to stay within the boundaries of the area you’re walking in. It tends to call the protagonist a lot to give advice, but sometimes it gives the necessary advice a little late. It can be pushy, forcing the photographer back at the jeep if there’s the slightest bit of danger or when an attempt at a photo has failed (in later missions), or very strongly encouraging you to go back to camp as soon as you got the perfect picture for the Editor. However, it shows exasperation and sarcasm at the increasingly precise and risky requests from the Editor, has that little snarky tone that I enjoy, and is a very likeable character overall. It even waves goodbye when you leave the jeep! Which other robot would do that?

It does look a little creepy when seen up close like this.

Most of my other points are minor issues, listed here in no particular order:
-The loading times can be pretty long.

-An album containing at most 60 photos, which is too little;

-A maximum of 3 photos sent to the Editor per day, which is slow for progression;

-The Editor only gives Silver and Gold rankings to photos, without explaining what was done well in a shot and what wasn’t;

-When you get off the jeep to explore and take pictures, you walk around an area. There aren’t many different areas of that type, in fact the areas near water will almost always look exactly the same;

-Stupendo will tell you once per area, every time you come close to the boundaries, that you can’t go further, also it tends to give advice a little late;

-Animals have a bad tendency to flee outside of the boundaries of the area you walk into;

-Your progress is tied very closely to the photos requested by the Editor. Couldn’t get the latest photo demanded, you gotta try again;

-There are only 20 different animals in the entire game;

-You can’t keep items found on the trip for the next day. Use it on that day or lose it;

-Collecting medals allows you to upgrade your equipment over time, but it’s slow and encourages you to drive around the entire island every day, at the slower pace of course;

-Jungle areas are boring. A jungle area is a tiny circle with three bushes allowing you to look at animals from a distance. And what do we get? Only baboons in the base game, and a tiger and pandas in postgame;

-Speaking of, the postgame is very short;

-And as far as I know, you can’t even send your photos to the SD card in order to then upload them to your computer!

All of those things combined may make you believe that I had a bad experience, but all in all, I actually quite enjoyed the game. It's... very far from perfect, to say the least. I would even say that to some, it's not good enough. I would give it a passing grade, but not much more than that. Although in my opinion, it's still not half bad. The content feels very lackluster and there's not much else to do once you've completed the "Story Mode", that's true, but at the same time, I felt it was at least worth a try. I don't regret the experience.

A part of me thinks that combining gameplay mechanics from this game and Pokémon Snap would make for something INCREDIBLE.

Next week: Let’s go battle!