Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party

Junior Jungle Party is one of many entires in the ever-popular Buzz! Series and this time they’ve ditched the virtual quiz format and offered up a selection of mini-games specifically aimed at a younger audience. The game is played using handheld buzzers, although if you own a multi-tap and four controllers you could probably get the same end product. Each peripheral is armed with four large colored buttons and an even larger “buzzer” at the top, so children of a relatively young age should be more than able to participate with no aid.

If you're quick on the trigger you'll be holding all the cards

There are a total of forty fun-filled mini-games here and each one usually centers around one simple objective, whether that is remembering a short color-coded sequence, whacking squirrels with mallets, or sticking your head in a crocs mouth and then withdrawing it before the inevitable happens. Sadly most of the games on offer are variations of one other and are merely presented in a different manor. This results in some pretty repetitive game play and a package that ultimately lacks any real diversity. It’s partly down to the limitations of the controller, which wasn’t designed for this style of play. While it does tick boxes for simplicity and accessibility it just doesn’t allow for any real depth.

The game consists of three main modes – Multiplayer, single player and practice mode. Like most party games out there the multiplayer portions are the only ones that are going to hold your interest for a sustained period of time, and here they offer you the choice of either quick play or custom play. Quick play throws you straight into the action, allowing you to choose only from a short, medium, long or marathon game (5, 10, 20 and 40 games respectively), while custom play allows you to tailor the experience and weed out some of those mini-games that are only there to make up the numbers. The single player provides you with ten exclusive games in which the aim is to get as high a score as possible, but again these are just variations of ones you will have played through previously and shouldn't hold your interest for long.

You'll soon wish it was your head being hit by a large mallet

Graphically the game does a competent enough job, everything is presented in bright jungle colors and the visual effects stroll along without ever really exerting themselves. The monkey models you play with look fairly nice and standout from the simplistic cartoon-like backgrounds, but they don't exactly push the hardware to breaking point and don't really justify the sluggish loading times. The sound has a cute and cuddly feel to it and the cheerful music compliments the audio effects nicely. It would have been nice to see a few more songs, but that’s me being overly critical.

Overall Junior Jungle Party is a somewhat entertaining party title and should keep your children quiet for a few hours, the lack of depth however will soon become apparent and they’ll be looking for their next quick fix.  If you have a lot of parties or family get-togethers then it may be worth it but otherwise splashing out could leave you feeling pretty under-whelmed.

Craig Bryan, NoobFeed