There’s nothing like the real thing….seriously!
it won’t be long before you are ready to shelf it: truly a blessing in disguise.
Last week, I saw a fine example of Norfolk genius! After meeting a friend for drinks, our judgemental gossiping was interrupted by a man who walked up to the window carrying a large dog in his arms. A little perplexed, we sat and watched as he turned away, put his dog down in front of him, and proceeded to trip over it. This may not seem relevant, but there is actually more point in setting off your own booby trap than making a video game of Jenga.
To be fair, there are a few good points. For starters, you are given complete control over the zoom, angle, and rotation of the camera, and like the normal game you are free to pull and wiggle the bricks at any speed and in whatever direction you wish. Also, Jenga’s world tour mode only has 8 stages, meaning it won’t be long before you are ready to shelf it: truly a blessing in disguise.
So, with the good out of the way, we’ll move on to the?let’s say ‘other‘.
Personally, it doesn’t take much to stress me out. I think the only reason people enjoy playing Jenga with me is just to see worry lines on my forehead crease up until I look like an elderly Lieutenant Worf. However, I was actually a little disappointed when the DS version failed to create the same kind of tension, primarily due to a complete lack of challenge.
In a normal game of Jenga, there’s always the chance that you could clumsily bump the table, or that a chunky finger would knock more than one brick out of place. But in the DS version, not only do you have the surgical precision of the stylus to work with, but you are also given a couple of small pins that will freeze two adjacent blocks while you tug at the third. Presumably these represent your other fingers struggling to hold the tower in place but, as the pins do such a flawless job, it makes the game incredibly simple.
Even watching the tower fall lacks any sense of excitement. In fact, it’s perhaps the only thing more anti-climactic than last year’s X Factor final. Rather than shattering bricks all over the shop, the digitised tower always seems to slowly crumble at exactly the same point, with the blocks landing in an almost organised puddle at the bottom. And just in case you missed it, you’ll always have the pleasure to watch again in an embarrassing ‘action’ replay.
Jenga is just one of those games that, due to its physical nature, is impossible to recreate successfully on a computer. It’s the same reason a DS version of Pop-Up Pirate wouldn’t work, as when the little bugger pops, you’d never be afraid that his solid plastic brick for a head could come crashing towards you.
The developer’s do attempt to add an extra thrill by setting each stage at different locations and time periods from around the world. However, you’ll often feel this concept has not been used to its full potential. For example, the first level is set in America. But rather than filling the backdrop with impressive skyscrapers, monuments, and the occasional supersized passer by, you play in an dark apartment that could just as well be in Caister rather than California. In a way, the whole scene looks eerily reminiscent of a CSI setting; all it needed was for the blocks to be stacked upon a corpse to really kill the mood!
Each level also contains a reappearing enemy or hazard, such as the boulder-throwing catapults in Medieval England that may nudge a few of the bricks out of place. Unfortunately, as the tour goes on, you’ll notice some levels where the developers obviously ran out of ideas. The undersea level is a good example, where playful fish are continuously swimming around the tower to distract you, whilst posing no real kind of threat.
Overall, Jenga has elements of good gameplay, although in return for not having to build the tower or tidy up afterwards, you sacrifice the very essence of the game. As a message to the developers, if you’re going to make something like this into computer game, the best way to make it interesting is to introduce some completely different ways to play. The final level on the world tour is perhaps the best, as it actually changed the rules of the game so that you could only pull out certain bricks. Why not build on this idea with other variations on the rules? Perhaps the first block you pull out could have a number on it telling you how many more bricks you need to remove before the end of your turn, or maybe some bricks could explode when touched to add an element of risk. However, as it stands, you’d be better off spending your money on the real thing.
The Bad: Incredibly short and simple to complete, lacking any kind of excitement or tension, and with levels that are each more disappointing than the last. Definitely one to be left in the shop!
