N-Philes

Juka and the Monophonic Menace

Posted February 12th 2007 by Jordan Mammo.

After appearing as if from nowhere with their well-received Racing Gears Advance title, Orbital Media has come back with two very different efforts: Scurge Hive and Juka and the Monophonic Menace. While Scurge has also enjoyed a generally favorable reception across the board thanks to its fast-paced action, Juka takes a more relaxed approach and almost lulls itself to sleep in the process.

The Monophonic Menace places you in the role of Juka, a young alchemist on a mission to stop the dark forces from rising up and taking over the land of Obla. You see, a long time ago the Ancients created some crafty sound machines that kept the land beautiful and good even after they disappeared mysteriously. When this secret power was discovered by settlers later on, however, it led to a Great War between the Dark Alchemists and the King. The King's forces eventually won, but only sort of, because otherwise Orbital could not make a videogame to finish the tale. As you can tell yourself, the premise is not very original and the plot itself held few surprises outside of the one an hour or so in when I discovered that Juka is actually a boy and not a girl as I originally thought when I looked at the box art.

Now, since Juka is an alchemist that means he gets to deal with magic and create potions to fight off enemies, and this makes up most of the game's combat and puzzle system. At its core, Juka is an adventure game where you use potions to do everything. Spread around Obla are six different-colored elements that you can collect and use to concoct various mixtures that can take down enemies and help you make your way around the land. Enemies can only be hurt with sleeping potions, which means it's nice that you don't have to worry about sifting through a bunch of items to figure out what to use, but also that it doesn't make for engaging gameplay. Other potions, meanwhile, are used more for navigating terrain and getting past obstacles. Unlock potions, for example, remove spells on switches that you can use to make bridges appear. Animate potions, meanwhile, are used on various puddles to break down giant walls of stone while Yeti potions are used as currency to convince the giant creatures to let you participate in mini-games. There's a wide variety of potions, though most are rather mundane like the ones mentioned unless you stick with the game long enough to learn how to slow down time and even stop it altogether.

Potions, then, are obviously in high demand seeing as how they're used for pretty much everything, so this whole system hinges on how fluid the creation process is.

There are two ways to collect elements: you can shake trees and plants and pick them up one by one as they fall, or you can gather ten or so at a time by using instruments you win in mini-games. Apparently you play these with so much soul that part of your life is actually drained and shot out of the instrument in the form of elements. After you have enough of these, you'll work your way around a creation system that involves filling up each element meter for each kind of potion you want to make by flipping back and forth between another menu in separate folder that explains how much of each element to use.

Phew!

Your hard work is rewarded, though: you finally have potions! Now that you've got a few you can start using them everywhere to do things such as unlocking, uh, locks and paying Yetis six potions for the opportunity to run around on ice collecting fish that are flapping around. It's robbery, I tell you. It's also when you begin entering rooms with four or five enemies that you start to realize there's just no way you have enough potions and elements to keep up with all this madness. You don't want to waste your inventory on enemies that are just going to wake up as soon as you leave the room, but you also don't want to lose some of the elements you've earned every time you get hit. So, eventually you'll start simply running through the rooms as fast as possible hoping you don't get rocked by enemy spells. This is a challenge because Juka moves about as fast as I can gather dates for Valentine's Day. You can bob and weave. Zig and Zag. Bop 'n' Drop. You will get hit no matter what, and before you know it you're back collecting elements again. Thanks to the constant back-and-forth between this never-ending collection and potion creation, it's hard to play for more than a few rooms before shutting the system off and doing something else.

When you're not running around collecting things and turning your life force into expendable ingredients, you're more than likely engaged in the other part of Juka's combat: geometry war. Described as a real-time pattern-based battle system, this is when you run around collecting different-colored shapes in the correct order as enemies shoot them at you. Once you've absorbed each shape in the correct order, you throw them back into your opponents' faces with such force that they disintegrate and the word "Poof!" appears out of thin air where they once stood. This whole set-up is kind of interesting at first until you start meeting up with multiple enemies that are "layered" so that when you collect one series of shapes correctly there's just another one after that waiting for you. And another one after that. And shapes are flying all over the place. And if you accidentally collect the wrong shape, regardless of which layer you're on, you have to start over. And it gets frustrating because it's actually kind of hard, but it's around this time when you'll realize the problem isn't that it's hard. The problem is that you're just running around the desert collecting shapes that are flying through the air.

Where Juka is much less of a mixed bag is in its presentation. It's very pretty, and that's one of the first things you notice after starting a new file and entering the lush and detailed Obla landscape. Little groundhogs even pop in and out of holes scattered around. The only setback here is that sometimes the areas look so busy that, when combined with the isometric view, some of the ledges you can actually climb onto blend in with the rest of the geography. Usually there's only one path you can really go on so it's not much of a problem, but it can be a little disorienting if you do get stuck.

Slight Pulse - More like Juka and the Monotonous Menace.

Despite the tired story, Juka and the Monophonic Menace starts off hinting that it's got something going for it. To its credit, it does feature some interesting concepts, but unfortunately they don't quite pan out as the game gets bogged down in all its collecting. A simple streamlining of the potion creation alone would've made the title stronger, but instead it's a slow and tedious experience that would be hard-pressed to keep anyone playing for more than a few hours.

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