The title was set up for demo play at Sony's Tokyo headquarters for the latest round of Experience PlayStation events Thursday evening.

Our play session started off in the surroundings of our base camp. We were able to make our character walk and run freely, but were told by Sony reps to get into a car in order to really travel far.

Regardless of how you choose to travel, the game appears to implement its control systems pretty well. When on foot, you move and strafe with the left analogue stick and look around with the right, giving you the ability to fully survey your surroundings as you explore the African wilderness. When in a vehicle, you use the triggers for acceleration and breaking and the left stick for steering. All standard stuff, but implemented solidly.

When on foot, you can press down to make your character bend down a bit and ready his camera. In this stance, you can sneak up on animals and take pictures, zooming in depending on your camera and lens type.

That's right. Afrika has not just collectible camera types, but collectible camera accessories as well. The version of the game on display had two cameras available, a Sony Alpha and an older camera, each with one selectable lens. The game's shooting interface and the resulting picture quality change depending on your current equipment.

Upon trying to take pictures of the few animals that we encountered, we discovered that the virtual creatures of Afrika, much like their real life counterparts, don't like being disturbed. Run up to a pack of animals, and they'll disperse. The only way to get some good pictures using just a standard camera is to sneak up on your targets, zoom in all the way, wait for the perfect moment, and snap away.

These rules apply for driving as well. If you approach a pack of animals at full speed, they'll disperse. Animals are best approached on foot.

Incidentally (because we're sure you're wondering), it appears that you can't actually hit animals with your car. The game stops you just before contact and you get a warning message from your partner about how you shouldn't get too close to the animals.

While you're free to take pictures to your heart's content, there is a point to your photography. You take on requests from a variety of parties who are interested in certain pictures, and in return receive money (in units of "A," whatever that is) which can be used to buy new items. The few requests that we were able to see in the demo involved taking pictures in different ways, some just standard shots, others taken at night, and others using specific equipment, such as a tripod.

Before we were able to try ramming (probably unsuccessfully) into more animals, evening came on and we were automatically taken back to our home base, which appears to be a central hub for taking care of all the game-like details such as saving and setting options. You also have access to three major components of the game from here: a shop, laptop PC, and field guide.

Your PC lets you store pictures that you've taken while out on your safari (if you don't do this, you'll eventually run out of either space or film) and check up on your in-game e-mail. E-mail is where you learn of missions which, as we described above, all seem to involve taking pictures. Mission descriptions are detailed, often with pictures and even video clips of the requested animals.

Building up the field guide looks like it will be a major time consumer for animal fans. The guide, which contained just one entry in the demo version, offers text descriptions of animals, pictures and videos marked as "National Geographic Data," and fully rotatable 3D models of each creature at different ages.

The shop is where you buy new camera equipment, tents (presumably for night shooting) and car upgrades. At the demo area's point in the game, the shop had new camera bodies, new lenses, and a few car spray paint sets available.

Many of the items in the shop appear to be licensed, with the car showing the "Suzuka" logo and all the cameras coming from Sony's line up new and old models. The shop interface actually opens up with an ad pimping Sony Alpha products. This was hopefully just for show, as having to see a new add every time you want to buy something would totally suck.

Although we were able to sample the various components of Afrika, our short play time did not really let us get a full feel for what the game is all about. We're going to have to sit down with the full title and explore for a few hours before discovering the true Afrika, it seems.

One area of the game did manage to disappoint us even in our short play time, though. On a visual level, Afrika has some major framerate issues. The game is consistently choppy. While it's true that there's a lot of detail in the world along with a full day-night cycle, not having a smooth visual engine does sort of take you out of the fantasy of existing in this virtual recreation of Africa.

Also disappointing is that the game world isn't totally seamless. While sections of the game world are huge overall, they do have invisible walls preventing you from going too far, along with clear entry and exit points, where the screen goes blank and the next area loads in.