Tak and the Power of Juju Impressions

THQ's colorful action game Tak and the Power of Juju for the PS2 and GameCube will be on hand at this year's E3. The game will let you play as a fledgling shaman who must rescue his tribe from a curse. Interestingly, the game is based on an upcoming TV cartoon that will hit the airwaves later this year.

In the game, you'll play as Tak, a young boy in training to be a shaman with his jungle tribe. However, a terrible curse has affected your village, and has turned all your friends and family into sheep. It'll be up to you to rescue your compatriots by defeating the evil wizard responsible for the curse. To do this, you'll be equipped a blowgun, as well as various magic powers you'll unlock over the course of the game. These implements will help you interact with your most important tools in the game: animals. In order to progress throughout the game, you'll need to interact with over a dozen animals you'll meet in the game, including moneys, orangutans, rhinos, and emus.

You'll use these animals and their particular abilities to solve the game's various puzzles. For instance, as we saw, orangutans, who hang around thin palm trees, dislike sheep intensely, and will automatically grab any nearby sheep with one hand, bend an elastic palm tree with the other hand, and launch the sheep into the sky. In some cases, you'll need to use this behavior to solve a puzzle, such as escorting your sheep villagers across an otherwise impassable chasm. In other cases, you'll be at odds with certain animals, such as angry chickens that guard the wizard's palace. Though you won't be able to defeat these menacing fowl head-on, you'll be able to lure them from their posts by stealing their one prized possession: their eggs, and tossing them off to the side. Later on, you'll be able to use your magic powers (or "juju") to do things like summon fruits that certain animals like, so that you can lure them into specific areas to complete certain puzzles. Tak and the Power of Juju is schedule for release later this year.