Mini-Review: Mad Balls In… Babo Invasion
“It’s a good game….”
This is specifically what I was told not to write about Madballs in… Babo Invasion, and I felt that as this is my first review for the team at OneLastContinue I should probably take heed and avoid that at all costs. It wasn’t a hard statement to avoid though, but as I’m a little young to remember the original Madballs toys I didn’t know what to expect from the game. Needless to say I was immediately drawn in to the strange and wonderful world of the Madballs probably due more to the design aesthetic – I mean, my avatar as a ball! I thought that alone was amazing! Whilst keeping in mind that this release was created for the Xbox LIVE Arcade I feel that it surpasses anything else available on that service, the graphics alone are impressive with colourful layouts and exceptionally good detailing. Maps are aplenty, and for such a tiny package I found very few issues with the graphics, bar a few screen freezes which were – to be honest – not that regular at all.
Gameplay and controls are beautifully simple and are well complimented by the in game movements generated by your actions. Obviously being a ball in game means you would expect to roll about, which you do, but as simple as it sounds – it’s not. The motion of your Madball is affected by the ever-changing environmental conditions such as ground tremors and explosions. That’s not counting the often disorientating attacks from certain enemies which can temporarily invert the directional controls, and ending up with you having to keep you on your toes constantly. The weapons control in the game is pretty much the accepted standard, just like in Call of Duty 4 where your right trigger is used to shoot, and ‘Y’ changes your equipped weapon mode. The weapons vary from small uzi-type guns to shotguns, plasma rifles and mortar launchers which are all attached to your Babo characters head. Some have more power than others, and the aiming mechanism is loosely point and shoot with no real accuracy – but this is because you get only a semi-birds eye third person view of the action.
It isn’t a difficult game, more addictive and frustrating, but is very well equipped to keep you locked away for a while and as there is no option to change your difficulty level in the campaign mode it just takes a lot of graft to get there in the end.
The game features campaign and online modes with unlockables such as new weapons and new character classes not unlike any disc based release. With online play these unlockables are shared between both campaign and online play, so the further you play in campaign the more toys you can use in multiplayer or vice-versa. Spread over ten levels which – whilst they differ in shape, colour and layout – are very similar in game play and towards the end of the game it all goes a bit ‘Assassins Creed’, becoming more than a little predictable.
The online section also includes a nifty little feature which I briefly mentioned earlier. For some mentally twisted, albeit awesomely cool, reason you can take your own Xbox Avatar, send it through a blender and reduces yourself to a head with a weapon glued to its ear! It’s quite ingenious really, adding a degree of personal pride to your grotesque appearance, but it’s also somewhat of an unexpected emotional curse as it turns every death match into a personal blood feud! It caused a lot of commotion when screams of “you shot me in my F*****G animated face, eat plasma chavy hat man”, could be heard echoing down my street outside.
Avatars, when integrated into the online multiplayer, do not roll around like the other Babo characters which I can only assume is something to do with some graphics limitation. Regardless of that though the game holds its own, and apart from some latency issues – my own fault might I point out – the online Avatar multiplayer is great and I’d love to see this sort of gimmick in the upcoming Modern warfare 2 perhaps making usage of the Xbox LIVE Vision Camera. Matchmaking in the online section is remarkably quick with little hassle, you simply log in and choose what mode you want to play in and go! In larger groups however the game play looses its charm as it becomes a bit of a frantic free-for-all. It’s fine for a couple of matches but I found more satisfaction in the smaller groups where you can build up a few kills at a time before some one takes you out with the only kill possible – a head shot!
I’m very surprised to find such a fun game available from the Arcade service, as most of the titles available are closer to emulated titles than any fully-fledged release., It’s very much worth a go, I’m still playing it for the sheer mad delirious fun it delivers with out being too childish, and with the possibility of DLC it looks like it’s just going to get better. I wont be putting this little game to bed anytime soon since I have a few vendettas to deal with regarding some bodyless fools online so I’ll maybe see your head in there!
Pluses
+ Fantastic graphics and detailed maps
+ Simple controls
+ Fluid character movements and interactions
+ Unlockable characters and weapons
+ NXE avatar integration
Negatives
− Very long drawn-out levels towards the end of the game
− Overly repetitive tasks in each level
− Not enough ability to switch between characters at will during campaign mode
− Poor selection of original Mad Balls characters (Oculous and Horn-head)
Madballs in… Babo Invasion, by Playbrains, is out now on Xbox LIVE Arcade. We apologize for the delay in this review but it’s here now and basically, as Phil Murphy says, it’s worth the Microsoft Points!
