Review: Hungry Giraffe

Posted by Ben on February 5th, 2012 | 0 Comments | Tags: Hungry Giraffe

I really wish minis were allowed to have network functionality. It would be absolutely wonderful to play games like Hungry Giraffe with the ability to see my friend’s score, but unfortunately that is not to be. Even without such functionality, however, Hungry Giraffe is an excellent endless climber, and a great mini to add to your collection.

If you’re after a new twist on a genre, don’t go looking at Hungry Giraffe. You’re a giraffe, you need to move up the screen, and you need to eat to keep going. The occasional obstacle will attempt to stop you, but really it’s about satisfying your long necked friend’s insatiable appetite. There’s very little to it, but the game itself is wrapped up in such an adorable package that frustration is kept to a minimum. If you miss food and slow down, you still have a chance to eat some and get your speed back up before you plummet into the abyss below. There’s only one mode, but as you progress higher and higher, you’ll unlock new locations to chow down in, and the obstacles get ever more fiendish as you go, with precision becoming more and more required in some of the later locations.

It’s worth mentioning just how great Hungry Giraffe looks, with a great art style throughout the game. I’m not sure how Laughing Jackal pulled it off, but the art on the PS3 seems to actually be at a higher resolution, and the marketing materials for the game dictate as such too. Laughing Jackal must have a coding wizard working there, because this is some seriously impressive stuff. The whole package seems designed to soothe and amuse, with a delightful classical soundtrack underpinning the action as you play. Of course, the most important part of a game designed to rely on precision and quick reflexes is the controls, and Hungry Giraffe’s controls do a good job, even if they are a little sluggish at times. The fact that you’re controlling an object with a neck means that turning is a matter of making the manoeuvre just before you need to do it, so that the head turns in time. Once you get the hang of it, it’s the simplest thing, but until you do, you’ll be barely missing fruit for a short while until you learn.

Hungry Giraffe is simple, fun and effectively made. It looks great on either system you play it on, and the gameplay is addictive enough to make you want to keep coming back for repeated sessions. It’s a shame about the limitations of minis as a platform, but thankfully Hungry Giraffe is fun enough that I can overlook those for a brief period while I eat my own body weight in junk food.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation Portable version of the game.