otakuxgamer

Ben Flasher, a localization editor at Natsume, gave me a thorough rundown on Afrika at E3 a few months back. He was also nice enough to answer a few of my questions along the way. Here are some of the highlights:

- Natsume sees Afrika as a “wildlife photography simulation.”
- National Geographic had a hand in making sure that all the animals look, act, and interact with each other just like they would in the wild.
- The game features licensed Sony camera equipment. Everything is modeled with just as much attention to detail as the animals themselves, so when you use the cameras, you’re going to see just about every option you’d find in a Sony Alpha series digital SLR.
- There isn’t really a story. Throughout the game you’ll be taking on missions in order to build your reputation as a photographer. Your goal is to eventually have your work featured on the cover of National Geographic.
- You will have the opportunity to work through over one hundred missions, equating to over sixty hours of gameplay. If you ever want to take a break, you can ignore the missions at any time and just explore the environment at your leisure.
- The animals react the same way in this game as they would in nature, so ones that are naturally aggressive may attack you. If you get attacked you may get knocked unconscious, resulting in you returning to your base camp and losing all of your photos for the day; there are consequences, but you aren’t going to get mauled to death.
- Most of your missions are photography assignments such as “hippo yawning,” “giraffes silhouetted against a setting sun,” and “cheetah running down its prey.”
- Not all of your missions are going to be photography based. Sometimes you’ll have to get audio recordings of certain animals. Other missions will have you collecting items for research. Later in the game there’s a mysterious animal that you have to collect information on.
- As you progress you’ll unlock additional tools that you can use to get closer to your subjects. The trap cam, for example, lets you set up a camera on a tripod and activate it remotely. You can also look forward to playing around with an RC camera that allows you to get close-ups of some of the more dangerous animals.
- There are fifty-nine species of animals in Afrika, and even amongst those there are several variants – children, adults, males, females, etc.
- The text descriptions for all of the animals were written by National Geographic.
- Afrika uses award-winning orchestral music.
- You’re going to be taught camera techniques that you have to use if you hope to get top-dollar for your photos. You will also be given step-by-step explanations on how to use all of the camera’s modes. However, if you really don’t want to learn photography you can always shoot in full-auto mode. You probably won’t get very high scores, but you can definitely get through the game that way.
- Unlockables include official National Geographic photos and videos of the various animals that you’ve encountered.
- Some missions allow you to roam freely while others have you team up with a partner who will drive you around so that you can shoot the animals running.