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Baku
Baku is a game much in the tradition of the likes of
Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Fighter; indeed this game shares
similar mechanics to both those games that are at the
pinnacle of the genre. Baku Baku isn't far off the pace
and as a console game appears to be exclusive to the
Saturn.
Baku
Baku is a classic pit-based game. Blocks fall into your
pit and you must follow the game's rules in order to
clear your pit and to try and stack shapes up in your
opponent's pit. You do this by removing lots of blocks
from your pit in one move instead of removing them in
small groups. This game breaks with the tradition of
colour matching and replaces it with a mechanism were
the player must match animals to food instead of forming
colour groups - e.g. match monkey with banana, panda
with bamboo, dog with bone etc. There are by default 4
animal and food types.
Blocks fall into
your pit in groups of 2
and you can
manipulate the pair as they fall in order to position
them favourably; the basic strategy being to form large
groups of food and then plonk down the correct animal
which will eat all the food in the group in one move -
resulting in an attack on the opponent.
Like
Puyo Puyo you can judiciously place food and animals so
that you can build up chain reactions and this is a very
satisfying aspect of the game. Every so often a pair of
wild card symbols appear that will remove all blocks
from the pit bearing the same food and/or animal symbol
that they touch - though without any detriment to your
opponent.
The
game has aged rather well I feel and it still looks very
good. The background tune is jolly - but there does only
seem to be one tune. The food and animals are
represented by simple
icons that are nice
and clear, but when an animal starts to eat
the food it is
shown as a fully animated 3D head munching away at the
food accompanied by satisfying sounds. The 3D models are
simple but clear, glitch
free and full of character.
There
are 3 modes. In arcade mode, the 1 player game is
basically a set of matches against a series of computer
controlled components and its placed against some
nonsensical back story about finding the best zookeeper
in the land – the story can be dismissed but it isn't
without charm and odd little videos are unlocked by
playing this mode. The 2 player
arcade mode is a
straight up battle between two human players and you
have the option for setting different speeds for each
player to introduce some sort of handicap system.
Then
there is the single player only ranking mode - where you
play a set of rounds until you lose whereby you get a
ranking for your performance. There is also a third
hidden mode which is unlocked by entering a key sequence
just before the main title screen (see gamefaqs). This
is some sort of league mode but it has not been
translated from the original Japanese which is a shame
but it's still playable.
The PAL
release was optimised which makes be believe that the
developers thought they had a global hit on their hands
– and perhaps the hidden non-translated mode was a
casualty of a deadline. I can understand why they
thought this - this is still one of the best puzzle
games around and it’s a shame that not many people got a
chance to play it.
There's
a comprehensive set of options allowing you configure
the control scheme and game difficulty, and
you can also
introduce a fifth animal and food - mouse and cheese.
High scores are kept and there's also some stat tracking
such as longest combo etc.
If
you're into puzzle games I'd make it my business to get
a copy of this.
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