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

Buy 'TAK 2: The Staff of Dreams':
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Tak’s a spunky caveman-type who’s been forced to fight a battle on two fronts—the first in the real world, the other in his mind. Two types of oppressors have overrun his world and the dream world, and just for good measure, a princess has been kidnapped, and Tak has been charged to save her. On his side? His wits, some do-it-yourself weapons, and a smattering or two of magical power.

On top of this, he has to deal with snarky otherworldly spirits, angry woodland life, a woefully inept imitator, some extremely bad luck, and people telling him what to do, over and over again, with no end in sight.

Oh, he also has a knack for being knocked unconscious every time he manages to do something right, at a rate that you could set your watch to.

Say what you will, but platform heroes have it the hardest out of anyone.

The core section of Tak 2’s gameplay is mostly divided into two sections. The first is the real world, made up of diversely-themed territories and taken over by creatures called Woodies, which come in assorted shapes and sizes, and range from easily defeated to total pains in the caboose. Once a stage is completed in the “real” world, for some reason, Tak always manages to get himself knocked out.

Unconsciousness, however, doesn’t mean rest; it simply means that he’ll be “bringing” the abilities he gained in the real world to the world of dreams, where a princess lies in captivity, and a lord of nightmares must be overcome. In the dream world, everything has a hazy hue, and you have a guiding spirit to teach you new techniques, and new ways to use the items you already have at your disposal.

Both worlds are full of not only combat, but puzzles to solve, some of which are obvious, others that will have you pulling out your hair, and others that will have you smacking your head due to their deception.

At his disposal, Tak starts out with a simple staff, and the ability to hurl small pieces of magical energy. Over time, he will learn to harness even more of this magical energy, known as “Juju”; no relation to the candy of the same name. At his side is a talking ant that he can throw at various creatures to either bite them and make them go berserk, or to put them to sleep. Said ant is vital to many of the game’s puzzles. Tak will also eventually be able to power up his attacks, execute caveman-style martial arts (complete with Matrix-ripoff stop-motion camera swinging), find and summon ancient Juju spirits, and call on various items and animal-morphing powers to aid him in his quest. It’s easy to say that there are lots of different ways to play Tak 2, and the variety to be found is a boon to the game as a whole.

Of course, a game with variety will still fall flat if it’s hard to take advantage of it. Control ranges from average to good; it will take a player maybe an hour’s time to get the hang of moving Tak around, as he doesn’t quite control as smoothly or freely as some other platforming mascots. It’s almost like he never wants to leave the ground he’s standing on, and the analog stick and jump buttons will easily get a workout as players push and press them harder than usual, wondering where they’re going wrong.

The game progresses in a linear fashion; it’s pretty much move around, cutscene, fight, cutscene, repeat until game ends. Fortunately, the cutscenes are treats in themselves; filled with wonderful and witty writing, and superbly-executed comic relief. In fact, sometimes players may be laughing so hard that they forget to listen to the cutscene’s instructions on what to do next; a unfortunate mishap which happened to this reviewer more times than he cares to admit.

However, all of this goodness aside, I would, like to take a moment to address the adventure-game creators of the world:

I do not appreciate your waterfall-slide sequences. Not one bit.

I know that their gimmick is of looseness of control combined with breakneck speed. However, I refuse to appreciate your sequences until you put some thought into the hazards. I refuse to appreciate bumping into any available pixel that isn’t part of my character every other second, and losing 15% of my health as a consequence. I refuse to appreciate be sucked into whirlpools that aren’t there. I also refuse to be a victim of too-strict hit-detection, which causes my character to be bumped around until I violate the game’s clipping rules and die by falling off of the game world.

These seem to be disturbing trends in waterfall-slide sequences, and Tak 2’s is among the worst of the bunch. No other part of the game made me want to throw my controller in as much frustration as this. Outside of these sequences, the game’s other shortcomings make themselves evident in the title’s relative lack of difficulty; while there are some tricks and traps, nothing is ever actually hard so much as hampered by the overall game mechanics.

Tak 2 has a visual style very much its own, yet familiar as well. It’s computer-rendered a la Donkey Kong Country, to the point where the in-game characters look very close in nature to their CG movie sequences. It does, however, look a smidge too rendered—and the smoothing techniques used in the game seem not to transfer all that well to higher-resolution mediums such as S-Video; the dithering will hit your eyes like a ton of bricks. Still, this in no way renders the game unplayable; it’s merely an observation.

Tak 2 also contains some very nice graphical techniques. The environments are quite detailed, and stretch far beyond the player’s general area. This fact is even incorporated into general game strategy. Also, realistic water effects on the PS2? Color me pleasantly surprised.

This game sounds as good as it looks too. There’s a lot of heart put into every aspect of the game’s atmosphere. Every character, from the heroic cavepeople to the Juju Spirits to the baddies to the animals themselves is superbly voice-acted, and the environments have their own sound, from hissing gunpowder barrels to waterfalls to miscellaneous effects.

As if all of this weren’t enough, Tak 2 also comes bundled with it own party minigames. Characters (as well as other special game features) are unlockable through gathering Juju gems in the main game, and these characters can be chosen from to partake in activities which range from battling on birds to trick-snowboarding down prehistoric slopes.

Tak 2 is a solid platformer, and has a lot going for it. It has its ups and its downs, but there’s nothing inherently bad about it. With its plethora of options and playability, this is a stellar buy for the younger crowd. Do so and they will love you forever. Older and more seasoned gamers, however, may find that its lack of overall challenge (along with its sometime potential for frustration) will not warrant anything beyond a rental.

Score: 7.5/10