Coming to Club Casual – June 10
I must admit that I haven’t closely followed the evolution of the brick buster genre. I have very fond memories of the good ole days of Arkanoid and Breakout so as I prepared myself for the latest game, Magic Ball 4, by Alawar Entertainment I was eagerly anticipating a trip down memory lane. I also figured that any game franchise that can survive three incarnations enough to make a fourth must at least be worth checking out.
So, the story goes like this…”First, aliens entered our dimension and kidnapped thousands of men and women. Then, in a whirlwind of human ingenuity, the brightest minds on Earth came together and created the Magic Ball of Relativity, which can return any object it touches to its home planet. Finally, they chose you to rescue the abducted.”
Hmmm…Luckily this convoluted back story is told via a single screen comic panel before moving quickly into the game itself.
The premise behind Magic Ball 4 isn’t terribly different to early games of the genre. There is a ball bouncing around the scene destroying obstacles in its path. At the bottom of the screen there is a paddle that the player can move from left to right to both stop the ball hitting the ground and direct it where desired. The level objective is to clear the screen of all obstacles.
Magic Ball 4 is an intricate, animated, destructible 3D world. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t expecting scenes to be made up of ice skating Eskimos, bleating reindeer, and tall, toppling towers of ice with precariously balanced polar bears. And this is only the first stage. After around 20 levels the scenery changes dramatically for the next leg of the journey.
Obviously underpinned by a great physics engine I enjoyed watching the way the animated characters interacted with changing scenery and the 3D special effects were great, particularly the activated powerups.
I did wonder if my outdated expectations of the genre artificially inflated my enthusiasm for Magic Ball 4 but there is no doubt that this game has a lot of great things going for it. I was genuinely impressed with the look and feel and took great delight in progressing through the creative and well-designed levels. It’s a very well-executed brick buster and I’m inspired to go back and play numbers 1 to 3.
To celebrate our upcoming launch, we are offering 50% off Magic Ball 3. Offer ends 29 May.
