Pitfall – The Big Adventure [Wii]

Posted May 11, 2009 by maceman in Reviews, Wii, Wii Reviews.

reviewed on Nintendo Wii

Pitfall originated on the ATARI 2600 system back in the 1980’s, then about four years ago a sequel Pitfall: The Lost Expedition was released on the then current platforms. Pitfall: The Big Adventure is pretty much exactly the same game, aside from the inclusion of the Wii motion control system.

In Pitfall you play as the explorer Pitfall Harry, and the story in a nutshell is as follows – your plane goes down over the jungle, you collect ancient artifacts, help a princess achieve her destiny, stop an evil high priest from reeking revenge, try to win over the girl and put a halt to your arch rival/nemesis plans to steal the treasures of El Dorado. The plot unfolds slowly as you meet the stories main players like Nicole, Bittbender, Leech, The Princess and the evil Australian St Claire.  Some of these guys will give you items like the torch, shield, slingshot, raft, gas mask and TNT with each of them assignable to the directional pad for quick swap.

As you play through the levels you will realise that there are several places that are not accessible until you have acquired these items and they are shown on the map for easy reference to go back to once you have them. Although this is a good sized Wii game, you will find yourself going over old ground a bit to get to or back from these areas.

The whole game is light hearted and humorous as you make your way through several levels in the four areas – Heart of the Jungle, Native territory, Lost Caverns & The Snowy Mountains. In these areas you collect ancient artifacts and encounter evil and friendly natives, and all types of bizarre jungle creatures. These creatures include the nappy wearing baby chimps, spine shooting porcupines (these can be a real prick), and the jaguar Quickclaw. Quickclaw is cursed with the ability of speech, and performs over dramatized pieces that would put any B-grade actor out of business, but at least the croc’s seem normal. You even have temples where you do magical body swaps with the aforementioned chimp, a scorpion, and a penguin, and then have to perform various challenges to get your body back.

Idols are scattered around the levels to collect and usually they are in hard to reach places or given to you after freeing the trapped explorers. These can be traded with the Shaman, buying the special moves smash strike and break dance, health increases, the super sling (much like the slingshot only it wears its underwear on the outside), or the Jungle/Native/Cavern/Mountain notes, that once purchased will tag a note on each level within the designated area advising on how many explorers, idols and Shaman are left to find. To charge up health you jump into healing water ponds, which judging by the pleasurable moan Harry gives off is obviously very stimulating, filling up the canteen whiles your there for a bit of mobile healing.

The controls are easy to execute, you use the control stick on the Nunchuk to move Harry around and shake the remote to attack and the A button to jump. Tilting the remote back and forward will swing once on vines and shaking the Nunchuk & remote up and down when in the water allows you to swim quicker than a Olympic swimmer on steroids.

There are too many other variables and special moves to list here but they all flow easily and naturally. Controller indicators will come up on the screen to illustrate what to do for the first time and then if you do forget, they are available to view from the heroic handbook in the options menu along with the map. The special items are also easy to use, like when the slingshot is armed a target comes up on the screen for aiming and you simply flick the Remote to fire a never-ending supply of stones.

There are some annoyances with the control system however, like Harry occasionally performs a heroic dash when the control stick is hit forward twice when it is not supposed to do this unless you shake the Nunchuk, or he inadvertently does a Smash Strike instead of performing a double jump. It only happens on the very odd occasion but it is extremely frustrating if you are standing on the edge of a cliff or going from vine to vine, and this causes you to fall to your death or having to replay an entire sequence all over again.

The soundtrack and background music in the game is good and it suits the style of game to a tee. The voice acting is also done well, except for St Clair who sports a very bad Australian (Aussie) accent and uses what I guess are supposed to be cliche Aussie slang phrases, which as an Aussie I have never heard spoken from anyone in this country, ever. Shockingly, we do not ride Kangaroo’s to school either.

There are a few mini games available at the Natives village and different games get unlocked the more you progress within the game.  For a bit of nostalgia you can even play the classic ATARI 2600 version once you have found it by entering a button sequence at the title screen. It’s a little bit of fun for something extra within the game but not something you would come back to once you have completed it. The only thing that would give it any replay value is if you want to go back and find all the Idols,  Explorers and Shaman once you have finished. As it stands, it is a pretty lengthy Wii game so the casual gamer will be occupied for quite a while anyway and replay value on these style of games is a rare occurance. Who says size doesn’t matter.

Tagged as Activision, Edge of Reality, Pitfall, Pitfall - the big adventure, Pitfall Harry, Pitfall Wiimake, The big adventure