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Reefer Madness – Big Kahuna Reef By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman I recently got a used computer that can actually run games made in the past 2 years. Ironically, the media center computer I got has one problem; its DVD drive is broken. While I can essentially play CD based games (Rollercoaster Tycoon, the classic Sims, and my boxed PopCap games), more recent games like: Champions Online, The Sims 3 or even the classic Fallout games (because they’re on DVD roms) won’t be played on my computer until I get the drive replaced. I’ve nearly circumvented this problem entirely buy purchasing games on Steam and Amazon’s downloadable game center and just letting them install overnight or while I’m at work. Upon checking out the deal of the day on Amazon, I came across a couple games for extremely cheap; the first game was a poor man’s version of Sid Meier’s Pirates, called Tradewinds 2 and the other was a very interesting Bejeweled clone that was literally price dropped to free.
Big Kahuna Reef is basically one of those boring Diamond Mine/Bejeweled type games with a really interesting unlock system that makes you want to keep playing. In Big Kahuna Reef you’re to switch any 2 adjacent pieces on the level “grid” in order to make a chain of 3 or more icons. Each move you take must clear icons from the board, so you can’t expend a few turns just to move a certain piece across the board (but with the high frequency of pieces on the playfield, you really wouldn’t want to anyway). As pieces are cleared from the board other pieces “fall” into the cleared spots (moving from the top part of the playfield towards the bottom). In Bejeweled you’re basically playing for highest score in a given amount of time or until there’s no possible moves left on the board; however, in Big Kahuna Reef you’re working to clear specific sections of the grid. In the game certain squares on the level grid are skinned with the textures of various building materials such as lumber or metal. When creating an icon chain over these squares not only are the icons removed from the board, but the textures underneath them disappear too. Each level goes relatively quick, as they all have a max clear time of 10 minutes. In fact, I think I’ve only gotten close to going over time once during my entire time spent with the game.
You continue on through countless levels with various layouts, doing the same thing over and over; the gameplay is repetitive and at its core pretty boring, but there’s something about the game that keeps me playing. Big Kahuna Reef comes with a pretty neat aquarium themed screen saver (yes, I said screen saver) that essentially gives you access to more fish with each level you beat. This alone kept me coming back to the game despite finding Bejeweled type games kind of stupid, since I really wanted to win new fish for my aquarium.
The graphics in this game are both good and bad in their own right. The gameplay and menu graphics are pretty ugly; it almost looks as if the interface was designed for mobile phones and just blown up to monitor size. The playfield is of a somewhat low resolution and the menu font is a very fuzzy version of the SpongeBob Squarepants’ title font. The screen saver on the other hand is stunning. While it’s not super realistic (in fact, the fish do seem to have a subtle cartoon style shading to them), the fish and underwater backgrounds are very pleasing to the eye. Perhaps it was because I was high, but I did catch myself calmly watching the screen saver last night for about 10 minutes before going to bed. The music and sound effects are pretty lame here. You get your choice of stupid looping song that screams “I’m a budget casual game” or the calming noise of ocean surf hitting the sand (I actually did end up listening to the surf on the sand noises, mostly because I was too lazy to change out whatever DVD I was playing in the background). The sound effects are all pretty stupid and I’m almost 100% certain that they’re all ripped off from various sources (like the bonus points noise that sounded uncannily similar to the classic ICQ bell sound).
It’s kind of hard for me to rate this game, since I honestly hate games like this and would have never picked it up had it not been free. However, there’s seemingly a huge Bejeweled type following as evidenced by how many of my friends play that game on Facebook and also by how many versions of this game have been made (World of Warcraft Bejeweled?). So if you’re a fan of this type of atrociously repetitive puzzle game, then by all means, pick the game up and download it to each of the computers you regularly use. If you’re a fan of virtual fish tanks (and there has to be someone other than me that is) get this game too, since it’s free. Just be prepared to lose a piece of your soul with each fish you unlock.
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