Working at Nerve has its advantages:
- All the personals you can eat.
- A nice, warm, blog to lay your head on at night.
- And sometimes, you get to try stuff before anyone else.
Though Wendy and Steph always manage to get to the food and shelter before I do (thanks a lot guys, seriously!), I did manage to trump them in one regards, and snuck my way into a press event for Play Mechanix’ brand spanking new, never before played Big Buck Safari event at the Black Bear Lodge last night.
I dragged three friends along to give me a little perspective on the game: Mary, Chris, and Tyler. They were all very upset to be playing their favorite video game at an open bar with free pizza, let me tell you.
Bribes aside, how was the game, huh? I mean, I’ve certainly cranked on about it enough? Well, it’s totally pretty awesome. We had a chance to play a few rounds, both in “Trek” and “Head to Head” mode. We also got to play the new “Bonus” mode, which I’ll get to in a second.
But first, for those of you who don’t know, Big Buck Hunter is an arcade game, often found in bars, where you use a plastic shotgun to blast away at pixilated bucks. You figured that out all by yourself, did you? Well, let’s see if you can parse this… Big Buck Safari is the latest iteration of the game, setting it in Africa, where you hunt new wild animals, with new bonus rounds, and new, slicker animations. Figured out that, too, huh? All right, smart guy.
So a couple of impressions, right off:
- Big Buck Safari is harder than Big Buck Hunter. Or rather, the latest iteration of Big Buck Hunter is actually pretty easy, so it’s nice to see them pulling the difficulty back a little.
- However, there’s a million more little opportunities to score big points. There are more critters running around, which is part of the difficulty: it’s hard to see the wildebeest for the meerkats, so to speak. On the other hand, bagging all six critters gives you tremendous bonus points.
- There’s also a trophy animal, such as a lion, or an elephant, that is very hard to kill, and causes an extraordinary feeling of satisfaction when you do so.
- The bonus rounds are far more creative and varied than the last game, including a board where Hyenas are chasing an explorer on safari, and you blast ‘em away before he gets eaten.
- The Head to Head round is too confusing to be fun. You’re essentially blasting at whatever is passing through your sightline, which eliminates, I think, all the skill from the game. Skip this.
- The Bonus mode is excellent. Basically, you can choose four of the super fun bonus games, and play them in any order you like. This is new, and a great addition to the game.
- The regular Trek mode, when we finally got to play it, is well-done, smoother animation than the previous version. However, the differences between the cows and the bucks is much harder to discern… Often it’s just a few shades of grey apart, which is exceedingly difficult. Not bad, just difficult.
- One other feature I should mention… The Buck Hunter Girls now move in full motion video, all the time, non-stop. Are they super sexy? Depends on how much you like girls who do the same, repetitive motion, over and over. Hm, maybe I phrased that incorrectly.
Interestingly, from talking to the reps, their plan is not to replace the current, online play tournament Buck Hunter machines, but install Big Buck Safari side to side with its bigger brother. If the lines to play both games last night were any indication, it’s not such a bad idea.
You can pick up your own Big Buck Safari machine, or just look for it around town, as they start to pop up. As Mary said, “It’s awesome. Totally awesome.”
[$5175, BMI Gaming]
