Reviews

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

This game is based on the story of the UK Marines captured by the Iranian military, a recent story that hit news channels around the world. The hero is an angry citizen desparate to do something about the situation.

Patriotic as it may be, what he does next doesn\'t seem to be the smartest course of action. Wearing nothing but the Union Jack, he drops in Iranian territory in search for the missing marines. All alone, with only a puny little pistol to defend himself.

Lucky for you, the author of this game never had time to add real enemies to the game. Otherwise, no doubt, you would have seriously failed your mission. All that happens now is that you, the hero walk across garbage heaps, dodging the occasional Barrel that is thrown at you (Supposedly the barrel is filled with Oil? I guess they have plenty of Oil). But you must avoid the barrels at all cost because if they hit you there is an explosion which results in the bloody amputation of both your legs and the end of the game for you. Luckily this is not how the news story unfolded in reality. I\'m not sure it would have been a good ending this way.

The background, which scrolls at a slower speed than the foreground, displays a slightly blurry garbage heap, which actually gives it a nice depth effect. Also, the terrain is varying in height which is a nice technical touch. You can jump, you can duck, you can shoot your gun although there is nothing to shoot at.

Ok, so the author apologizes in the readme because the game was written in only a single day. This shows. Still I\'m going to give it a 3 for artistical, because of the relation to the current news event.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 3 Technical 1 Genre 2

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

In this game you control ballz, a genetically manipulated ball specialized in close combat and ball warefare (as a molecular biology major I must strongly object to this kind of unscientific nonsense, but luckily it is of no importance this review). Ballz may be a ball which has mastered speech and intellect, but that doesn\'t mean he has full control over his movements. No, Ballz, being a mere ball, can only do two things: 1) roll forward at uniform speed and 2) bounce. And only by timing Ballz\' bounces in an excruciatingly exact manner is it that you get him through this game.

All this results in very inovative gameplay. By making precisely timed jumps you must make your way through 18 levels. The main goal is to simply reach the exit of the level, but you also have to collect all the yellow stars you find on the way to unlock the next level. Collecting stars is optional in that you can finish a level without them. However, you really need to get almost all simply to unlock the next level.

Now this all starts out simple enough. You jump a little here, a little there, collect the stars, find the exit and there you go. From about level 6 though, it gets very challenging.

More depth is added to the gameplay with several new game elements that are added as you progress to newer levels. You\'ll encounter fire and spike blocks that kill you instantly. There is water in which you float. There are blocks that crumble after you touch them once. Also, after level 6 or so you get a new ability, a special super jump that lets you rush horizontal in mid-air. All this really keeps the interest in the game high, and really makes you want to continue playing the game. For this review I only managed to play until level 10, so there may be even more surprises that I don\'t yet know about. But I\'ll definitely keep trying to get to the end of the game.

This game was made by a team of four and that shows. In my opinion this game has the most polish and the highest replay value of all entries. I haven\'t even mentioned the level intro sequences and the pretty artwork. There is a catchy tune playing in the background. The game is balanced, easy in the beginning but challenging near the end, with constantly new elements being added to keep the gameplay interesting. Now having said all that, the implementation of the garbage theme is a bit weak. Therefore I award high scores in all categories except the genre category.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 2