As Hula Girl indicated, the Jungle Cruise is radically different as of this morning. I had gotten to enjoy the pace of the old Jungle Cruise, and I am not very pleased with the changes. To me, it seems like whovever made these changes didn't understand what made the original game fun; perhaps they only were aware of what made the original frustrating at times and tried to address those issues. At any rate, here is a comparison of the old and new jungle cruises:
SIMILARITIES:
There are still six rooms in the Jungle Cruise, and the game ends after you visit all six rooms three times.
The second time you enter the first room, you still get an extra 40 gas and 5 extra film.
Some of the animals appear in the same locations.
You still lose gas for running into things.
The gas conservation trick still works, as described by WDWTigger in
the next post. In short, never hit up!
Update: The loading animation is still the same "Roll Up! Roll Up!" so you get to watch the boat move across half the screen while you are waiting for it to pick you up. However, this was such a
popular aspect of the original game, that they have effectively made it twice as long now by removing all animals and pickups after you get in the boat on the first screen. But the best part is, you get to drive!
Fun for hours. Or not. At least they removed the crate that you would always hit in the loading animation...nothing worse than hearing Ned chastise, "Now don't get carried away, you can hardly steer this thing!" when you're completely incapable of steering (and not even in the boat yet). Funny the first time, mildly funny the second time, starting to get annoying the third time...makes you want to rip your ears off after the 8th time...glad you ripped your ears off after the 23rd time...
Update: In the old Jungle Cruise, the longer you waited to take a picture, the more points it was worth (there have been various theories floating around on this, but trust me
). Originally I thought this was changed in the new version, but I did a pretty thorough comparison and it is still the same as it used to be. However,
the scores that appear on the screen after you take a picture are wrong. They might be as much as half of the final value when you view them in the album. I double-checked this as well, and it is the album scores that count toward the final score, not what appears on screen. So, you can use the in-game scores to get a relative idea of which animals are worth more, but that's about it.
Update: The rewards are still the same: 20 credits for taking the tour, 50 points for a decent score (never knew what the threshold was for this), and 100 points for making the high scores list (plus you still get the Explorer's tent PDF link). Anything else? Oh yeah, I think they still give you a poster the first time you play. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!
DIFFERENCES:
Revised instruction screens; if you didn't find the first instructions helpful, you probably won't find these helpful either.
As Hula Girl said, you start the game with 100 film and 100 gas (previously, this was 25 film and 140 gas).
Each film and gas pickup is now worth 20 extra (previously worth 5). I actually finished the game with more gas and film than I started. This effectively eliminates the film/gas conservation strategy of the game.
There is only one film and one gas pickup on each screen. They appear in different locations though, and they appear almost immediately after you enter the room (previously, one room had two gas pickups; they always appeared in the same location, but at different times).
There are NO animals in the first room (main dock) during any of the three passes. Why? Perhaps they want you to practice your driving (although given all of your extra gas, you might prefer to see if you can hit all the rocks). There is also no film/gas during the first pass through the first room, but you do get gas/film pickups on the second and third passes.
As Hula Girl said, the crates have been replaced by rocks that are in different locations each time you enter a different room. These formations get progressively harder as you get deeper into the game, although they are fairly easily avoidable except for the third time when you enter the first room. Inexplicably, there is a
row of five rocks blocking the river, so they are completely unavoidable. Fortunately (well unfortunately really), you have more gas than you need, so it's not a problem to hit these or any other rocks really unless you're trying to be a pinball.
Although some of the animals appear in the old locations, there are many new locations and even some new animal views (if you've ever wanted to photograph an elephant's backside, now's your big chance). This is one of the few changes I actually liked, although this is somewhat negated by the increased rate at which the animals disappear. Look for the new tiny lion by the horizon.
The animal point values are all different, and smaller for the most part. As Hula Girl said, the birds are particularly lower in points. If you've developed a particular fondness for taking the perfect toucan picture and getting 900+ points, prepare to cry. I am not even going to attempt to sort these new point values out since the Jungle Cruise is kind of ruined for me (can you tell if I like the new changes yet?).
The animals disappear faster. Also, as you get further into the game, more animals appear simultaneously, and many more animals appear in general. At times it seems like all you can see on the screen are puffs of smoke. Since you have so much film though, there's no reason not to shoot everything that moves. Really, they should have given you a film machine gun, given the new pacing of the game. Before, where you had a few seconds to line up a good shot and there were only a few animals on the screen at any given time, now it's total chaos and you'll just be clicking randomly by the time you get to the third pass. Whee.
That's all I can think of for now. If you liked the old Jungle Cruise, then I doubt you'll like the new one very much. If you hated the old Jungle Cruise, then who knows...maybe this is more your style. Have fun! (?)