It sucks when you’re hungry. Sometimes you just want to bury your face into a burger, or tear into a taco. Out on the African savannah, a Hungry Giraffe feels your pain.

A 20 foot tall, 1200kg animal like the giraffe needs to chow down on tons of food each day, just to stay alive. But, oh no! All the tastiest leaves have been eaten, while up in the sky endless quantities of snacks, fruit and junk food hover just out of reach!

Hungry Giraffe features the world’s largest and hungriest even-toed ungulate. Through skillful steering of his neck, you can propel your half-starved giraffe on his twisty-turny upward journey, chomping on strawberries, fries, sandwiches and naughtier treats.

But beware! The skies are also strewn with hazards. Poison, Anvils and non-prescription Drugs also hover up there, ready to send unwary giraffes plummeting to earth.

Hungry Giraffe is by FAR the greatest giraffe-feeding game of all time! Dare you miss out?

Intro text and trailer give you a pretty good idea of what you need to do in this game. The giraffe is hungry, feed it! Move the giraffe and eat as much food as you can to rise and rise as far up as you can. Junk food gives you more calories, thus giving you a bigger speed increase. Healthy food has less calories, but is still useful when you need to make it to the next set of fries and burgers.

While climbing, you better watch out for dumbbells since they will make you heavy and will take a bit to leave the digestive system (go eat one and let me know when it is out). You also need to stay far, far away from anvils since they instantly stop you, looney toons style. Poison is bad as well as it will make you vomit over the screen, obstructing your view of the action. Oh, and you must also avoid pills. Pills will send you flying on a different trip, bringing a technicolor haze to the screen while also inverting your controls. You know, like regular pills.

But it is not all doom and gloom for our giraffe, as we can also get some help from two particular items: Hard hats and Chili Peppers. Hard hats act as a boost that makes you invincible (anvils, beware!), sending you flying up for a handful of seconds. You should save them as a last resort for those times when you just couldn’t reach the next food item. Chili Peppers will also provide you with a speed boost, but you must still avoid any hazards since you’re not invincible.

If you’re good enough, you can play all stages at once, starting from the first one and unlocking each new one as you eat and climb to the sky. If you lose, you can start back from stage 1, or you can continue from the last stage you managed to unlock.

There is an in-game awards system that recognizes your achievements in this minis adventure, and those are always great for bragging here and there. Some examples are:

Fast Food King: Eat 3,000 Fast Food Items
Caliente Jirafa: Eat 400 Chili Peppers
Fully Pumped: Eat 100 Dumbbells

After you have complete level 10, the scenery loops back to stage 1, but the difficulty increases. How many laps can you complete? Doing a single run is not that hard, but making it to a second lap in one go will definitely require your complete attention and devotion.

The game might sound simple, but it is very addictive! Time will fly as you try to beat your last highscore, or when going for a full Stage 1 to 10 run. Laughing Jackal managed to make the game look better when playing on the PS3 (which is a first for a minis release), and it was a nice surprise when going back and forth between the PS3 and the PSP for this review.

Hungry Giraffe is a very addictive minis that will give you hours of fun before you even realize it. The need to beat your high score, unlocking all achievements, and making “one last try” will make you get the most mileage out of this minis purchase.

[review score=”83″ pros=”Easy to pick up, hard to put down.
Nice, simple presentation” cons=”Things can get a bit hectic in the later levels.”]

Cost – $3.49

Disclaimer

Total amount of time played: 4 hours.

This review is based on a PSP/PS3 copy of Hungry Giraffe provided by Laughing Jackal.