Wednesday 01 Jul 2009

The concept is one of the oldest in video gaming: move a paddle to bounce a ball around, a ball that destroys each block it hits. It’s been done many times before, probably most famously by Arkanoid, so when a new implementation of it comes out it must somehow set itself apart. Magic Ball is certainly a new take on the formula with its 3D destructible stages, and it’s an enjoyable one at that. Its downfall is its length – the content included in the game take less than three hours to complete.

Fully destructible 3D environments on a 2D plane

The unique feature of Magic Ball is its stage design: each stage is a set of 3D objects that you try to destroy with the titular ball. The first theme is Pirates, and the stages consist of various aquatic objects such as sharks, boats, islands, cannons, rocky outcrops and houses on stilts. The game eases you in – the first few stages are extremely easy, with some taking me less than 10 seconds to complete. There are 25 Pirate themed stages, and while they start off simple, by the end they are elaborate designs that come crashing down in spectacular fashion when the ball takes out a supporting strut and the physics engine kicks in. The impressive stage destruction is entertaining but your attention has to be focused on the ball if you want to survive – the irregular shapes mean you often can’t predict where it’s going to go.

The power-ups are a mixed bag in terms of usefulness. They randomly fall “down” towards you when you destroy stuff and they do things like make your bumper bigger (or smaller), call in lightning, upgrade your bumper to let you shoot things directly, make your ball bigger or smaller, change the way the ball travels or split the ball into three. It’s important to choose the power-ups you want to collect because quite a few of them hinder your game. Although there is good variety in the power-ups, the game quickly reveals all of them and doesn’t leave any for later, so they soon become a little stale.

Pirates and Knights (all we’re missing are Orcs)

There are 50 stages in total, 25 with the Pirates theme and 25 with a Knights theme. The later Knights stages are far more challenging and thus far more entertaining. Watching castles fall down when the Magic Ball takes out their supports is also satisfying – especially with the iron ball power-up, a ball that doesn’t bounce off things but instead goes straight through them. The bugbear in the Breakout/Arkanoid formula has always been the pain of bouncing the ball around for ages when only one little block is left. Creat have this covered – once there are 6 or 7 items left the remaining items slowly disappear in bolts of lightning, and you don’t have to clear the entire stage to go through to the next – once there are only a few “blocks” left an end-stage power-up falls down, and collecting it moves you on to the next stage.

The main problem of Magic Ball is its brevity – just 3 hours in and it’s all over. There is an expansion pack that offers an extra 25 levels, and it’s clear the game was designed with this in mind. You can, of course, replay levels to beat your score on each, but while there are combos you can get for hitting different types of obstacles without the ball bouncing back down, I haven’t managed to figure out what part I play in achieving them, so scoring high is a fairly random occurrence. You can also go for the trophies, but most of them will be achieved within the normal course of playing the 50 levels.

The gameplay is mostly classic Arkanoid but the pace is quite a bit slower, making for a more relaxed, less competitive type of game. The early levels are a little too slow in pace, but the game later becomes more interesting as the stage designs increase in complexity. The problem is that it ends too soon after it becomes interesting!

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Contributor:	Peter

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