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Ooga Booga carefully balances its multiplayer and single-player aspects, making it one of the longer lived party games on the market – which is both a good and bad thing.
If Sonic Shuffle was SEGA’s response to Mario Party, then surely Ooga Booga is their response to Super Smash Bros. (It plays almost exactly like what SSB would if the goal were merely to inflict damage and not to knock opponents off the platforms). Thankfully, however, Ooga Booga is better than Sonic’s unfortunate foray into the world of party games. Visual Concepts, proving they’re good for more than producing SEGA’s excellent 2K sports games, managed to develop a fun and accessible gameplay system and decorate it with plenty of style. Featuring pure, mad multiplayer fighting, the game is surely entertaining even if also a too simplistic.
Ooga Booga is the name of a mystical volcano goddess in a far away, unexplored ocean who calls forth the kahunas (witch doctors) from four area tribes to combat each other in order to gain her favor. The four shamans – called Twitchy, Fatty, Hoodoo, and Hottie after their respective tribes – take part in a straightforward battle called Smakahuna where they attempt to literally hit each other as many times as possible, each hit gaining a point. The player who has accrued the most points at the end of each timed match is the winner.
Thankfully, things get a little more complicated than running around and punching everything else that’s running around. On the island arenas where the tournaments take place, several instruments of destruction are at your disposal. Shrunken heads (which look like pineapples with goofy faces drawn on them) fall from trees for the sole purpose of being hurtled at your enemies. Spell Tokens are scattered throughout each arena and imbue you with temporary magical prowess. Warthogs and birds can be found, ridden, and made your vehicles for cutting swaths of destruction through your enemies. Magical tikis are easily claimed and sent to attack the other kahunas in your name.
Save for the shrunken heads, however, all of the above items are not available immediately upon popping the game GD into your Dreamcast. Through a long series of training exercises and single-player tournaments you can gradually unlock the use of the spells, warthogs, birds, and tikis as well as additional types of play other than Smakahuna. Additional goodies like different masks for your characters can be earned through taking advantage of the multiplayer modes of play.
In this manner, Visual Concepts tried to carefully balance the single player and multiplayer aspects of Ooga Booga’s play, making it a far more drawn-out and longer-lived game than other party games on the market. With tons of stuff to unlock in both single and multiplayer modes, you should in theory get plenty of use out of the game on your own and with friends.
Unfortunately, the theory falls apart because the game just isn’t very addictive. Running around throwing heads at other players is fun for a while, sure, but quickly loses its attraction when you realize there isn’t anything deeper going on even after the extra weapons and features are uncovered. There is nothing more rewarding that comes from playing the game than completing the tasks and filling out the list of items that can be obtained. Once you’ve done that, there is little reason left to play.
Ooga Booga tries to build an atmosphere of fun through funky characters with lots of personality and stylish tropical design. Sometimes it works – a fat kahuna dressed in a skirt riding a warthog and screaming “You can’t handle the fat man!” is bound to garner a few chuckles here and there. Sound effects and music are perfectly suited to the game’s lighthearted tone and exotic theme. But as with the gameplay, graphics fail to be anything more than utilitarian. They’re bright and fun and even appealing because they’re so clean, but can’t hold your attention for very long and aren’t up to Dreamcast standards of detail and resolution.
In the end, Ooga Booga tries valiantly to be a nothing more and nothing less than a fun party game you can play with your friends. It’s even playable online with SegaNet subscribers across the world (although the lobbies are mostly empty these days anyway). However, with gameplay that doesn’t foster rivalry so much as apathy and can’t even impress the shallow with pretty graphics, it ultimately failed at becoming my title of choice for pulling out when company is over. It’s fun for a while and is to be appreciated for its admirable qualities, but just isn’t as good as the competition.
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