Review: Pictureka! - Hunting For Cartoons

Overview

Electronic Arts has just released another iPhone port of a traditional board game. Pictureka! is a hidden object game filled with intense searches and silly graphics that fuel its uniqueness. While you may not have time to sit down and play board games with the family, this iOS app lets you enjoy some creative fun on-the-go.

Features

Pictureka! has a campaign mode that takes place on 5 islands and a multiplayer mode for up to 4 players. Each level in the main game requires you find a certain number of objects located in an ocean of random items before the time runs out. Pass and play multiplayer lets you select up to 3 other real or AI opponents to play against. With 3 different card types, full stats, postcards, and player profiles, the game provides much more depth than Where's Waldo and Doodle Find.

The Good

Unlike most other EA games, Pictureka! lets you personalize in-game profiles that you play as in all game modes. Besides renaming your character, you get to choose from 16 picture icons and 16 sounds that are shown upon every turn. The game has additional challenge cards for every level so that you can have fun regardless of how good you are at the game. A menacing hourglass and beeping countdown also accompany your search and add a level of intensity to the game.

The pass and play mode is definitely the best job EA's done with multiplayer in any of their games so far. At the start of each round, you select computer and player profiles, the type of cards you want to use, and the score limit. Each person then takes turns drawing cards and rolling dice. A red card allows all players to bid on how many of a certain object they can find in a picture. Green lets you find a dice roll number of an item and blue requires you to find it the fastest. By completing a challenge, a player earns a point, and the person to reach the score limit first wins. The wacky graphics and sound effects in Pictureka! are fantastic. Unlike other games where the objects are lined up neatly, Pictureka! has cartoon style artwork that is rotated and distributed randomly on the screen, making it more challenging to find the hidden item. The artwork is made to be comical and will definitely keep the family entertained. The background music starts out slowly in every level, and the tempo increases dramatically as your time begins to run out, producing lots of creative, fast paced fun.

The Bad

Pictureka! does have its flaws, most of them control-based. The most annoying part of the game is that you have no idea how large the game board is. When searching frantically for a certain object, it's nice to know how fast you have to scan through each screen before scrolling on to the next. A minimap or zoom feature would greatly help this issue, as otherwise, the game relies largely on luck and the object's initial placement. Occasionaly, you won't be able to recognize an item that you have to search for, as the cartoon graphics make some things difficult to distinguish. Some parts of pass and play also seem unbalanced, especially the AI. At times, they seem to be experts at playing, whereas other times you'll see the object appear 3 or 4 times on the screen while they don't notice it. It would be nice to be able to select a difficulty level for computer players. There are no penalties for random tapping and you don't lose points for failing challenges. This means that you could essentially tap on the screen as much as possible in hopes of touching the desired target. When drawing a red card, you can bid insanely high values just so that other players don't score any points.

The Verdict

Pictureka! is the perfect game to play for many occasions and one of the better local multiplayer experiences available. It beats out other games in its genre due to its level of customization, personalization, and somewhat chaotic graphics. Pictureka! is a should buy for $1.99 and will provide some competitive fun for the whole family.