A third tier GameCube title which is not worth your hard earned money.
You’re a Gamecube owner who bought the system at launch along with a couple games. Now you’ve completed all of them multiple times and you want to play something new on your petite machine. But with the Gamecube in its infancy, the library lacks selection. Tarzan Untamed, possibly one of the games you haven’t tried, unfortunately deserves to remain on the shelf.
Loosely based on Disney’s version of the tale, you help Tarzan defend the forest and its inhabitants from malicious human invaders. Most of Tarzan’s levels fall into one of two types – continuously moving obstacle courses, such as swimming down a river or water skiing, and more standard levels. Although Tarzan looks like a free-roaming 3D platformer in pictures, you actually navigate extremely narrow paths. Sometimes only one exact line will allow you to complete the level. As such, you won’t feel particularly motivated to further explore a level once you finish it. Sure, you can try to collect all the objects – film reels in Tarzan’s case – and earn a 100% score, but doing so simply isn’t that interesting or entertaining.
Players of average skill level will find the game fairly simple. Almost none of the challenge results from enemies, which appear infrequently and don’t put up much of a fight. When you do battle with another human or animal, you truly do win by button mashing. Thus, as long as you can tap the controller’s buttons fairly quickly, other creatures won’t stop you. Instead, Tarzan depends on obstacles to prevent you from breezing through. You’ll constantly dodge rocks, branches, holes and a few animals. You can also perform a few tricks as you slide down trees for extra points. The smooth frame rate, a near constant 60, combined with the simple controls allows you to maneuver pretty easily. However, the camera can create some weird viewing angles at inconvenient times, causing you trip over an object you didn’t see.
The frame rate is the highlight of Tarzan’s graphics. Overall the game looks dull and old. You won’t see any detailed backgrounds or clever special effects. The game models’ low poly counts makes them seem like smoother PlayStation 1 characters. Even in the cinemas, the characters are blocky and angular. Basically, no aspect of the graphics suggests the game needs the Cube’s features.
Like the graphics, the sounds and music possess no noteworthy features. While not bad, they don’t ever create feelings of tension or excitement. You simply won’t pay attention to the background music as you play.
Most systems launch with two to three high quality titles and lots of third tier ones. Tarzan definitely belongs to the latter category. Even if your current Cube library already feels old to you, Tarzan doesn’t warrant your $50. The game ranks as average to mediocre in every category, including the most important one of enjoyment. Instead, be patient and wait for the releases of far better games.
