Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Avalanche
Release Date: October 12, 2004

Buy 'TAK 2: The Staff of Dreams':
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From lazy ports to purposely stunted development times to the classic licensed crap-a-thon, my distaste for the complete lack of any sort of quality in so many of the releases as of late has grown with great vigor. Time and time again I spew the same rhetoric on why these corporate entities need to look past the quick dollars gained through hastily throwing a game on store shelves and betting on faux-hype and impulse buyers. They need to do this not only to keep pretentious journalists like myself satiated, but also to maximize the buzz around a game long after the initial post-release period. Now, you might be asking, why am I covering all of this? Because a developer went and gave me the one of the biggest surprises I’ve had all year with Tak 2: Staff of Dreams, a THQ-published Nickelodeon tie-in platformer that is actually one of the better games to release before the AAA avalanche known as the Christmas shopping season gets into gear. Tak 2 is a fantastic, only slightly flawed platformer filed with vibrant colors, fantastic characters, and most importantly, great gameplay.

Tak 2 takes place through a host of bright stages in and out of the Dream Land. Tak is informed that he must go on a quest to save a Princess – which he smartly declines, until he is told that he will never be able to leave the Dream Land unless he completes this quest. Thus, the unfortunate hero begins his journey to do what many-a-videogame hero has done, this time with more flare than either the first Tak game or most other modern platformers from the current generation.

Tak controls with the sort of grace that should be painstakingly programmed for every single platforming title out there. Since the genre requires quick, clean accuracy and most of the 3d platformers out there still don’t control with anywhere near the same level of perfection as their late 2d-era counterparts, playing Tak 2 feels like some sort of divine gift. It is incredible how many programmers simply cannot grasp how to make a character move around comfortably in conjunction with a controller! (The team that made Drake of the 99 Dragons, I’m looking at you guys.) Looking beyond the plain aspects of the movement engine, controlling Tak is a mixed bag of the designers paying attention to playing upon the intuition of their audience and employing innovative new ideas that add to the rare professional sheen that Tak 2 carries. To elaborate: The controls for swinging on vines are very intuitive and natural in the way that takes a lot of work to create, but the player will never notice this (as with all art forms, if the audience is so absorbed that they do not think of the workings behind what they see and feel, then the creator has done his job). At the same time, the game contains an upgradeable combo system that adds a rich layer of depth to the combat system. Yet, making sure to keep a broad audience in mind, none of these tougher details need to be dealt with in order to finish the game. They sit waiting to be used in order to help along the player who wishes to use them, and nothing more. While I do not think this is the best design philosophy, it works much better than what is applied to almost every game that has ever released. For a title that could have been a cheap cash-in, I think THQ deserves extra respect for releasing this game in the fantastic condition it is in – despite a slight problem that halts the enjoyment of the platforming every so often: The camera.

While panning the camera about, it will periodically become stuck against walls, or simply shoot off into a random direction and stay there. For no explainable reason. Until the camera decides to free itself, the player is either going to stand still and hope the problem clears up or make an attempt at playing the game blind samurai-style. Thankfully, these camera issues are few and far in between – it’s just the crippling nature of these problems that bears mentioning here.

Tak 2 isn’t all about platforming this time around, however. Tak will be stuck in a barrel downstream, fending off enemies as he goes, raging about in an off-roader, and transforming into a selection of animals including bears, frogs, and boars (what’s a cartoon-ish jungle setting without a boar these days?). Impressively, these all control so well that you won’t have a second thought about the entire deal, doing away with the sorry excuse that most developers have when under fire for including a vehicular section or something similar in their games: “We were focused on the main game.” Not a good enough excuse, if THQ has anything to say about it.

The colorful, slightly surreal setting of the Tak universe is emulated nicely. While the game is not a technical wonder by any means, it does look good, easily on par with any other big-name platformer this generation. The developer knew that “vibrant and colorful” does not equal to “flat but bright textures”, giving the game a strong, fleshed out appearance that most of the more color-oriented releases have lacked in recent months.

As for technical errors, the worst of it is in the inconsequential slowdown present throughout the game. The framerate is never truly stable, and while it remains very high for the majority of the game, it does take a few dips. Most of these occur when there is a high number of special effects on screen, something that does not happen often enough to warrant any substantial deriding of the game or its developer. A better clean up job would have been appreciated, but compared to even the most money-filled AAA releases – the record-setting budget given to the slowdown-filled Shenmue being the best example this generation – Tak 2 is still ahead of the game.

Hopefully this game finds some success and not only THQ, but publishers everywhere follow suit when releasing a licensed videogame. Nobody is expecting Staff of Dreams to be the next big thing, and while it has far above average gameplay, it is not on the level of the premier releases of the year. It is simply a fun game, and that’s all anybody is asking for when they plunk down forty dollars to buy a videogame. I never thought I’d see the day when I would give a Nickelodeon-based game anything higher than a 6, but here we are. And I’m very, very glad for it.

Score: 8.0/10