[#3] Boing, Boing, Boing,

Review by beast4321 on Friday, September 9th 2016

Beast4321 here! I'm back for another review. This time, the game I shall review is a game of platforming, magnet puzzles and an epic quest to save some friends from the clutches of some evil space tyrant (the evil space tyrant is clearly inspired by Lordeldar.) This game is by a friend of mine, who has a record of two features; Mario10007. Expectations are pretty high. I will now analyse this game in great detail, before answering the all important question; is Ultra Ball feature worthy?

Story (copy and pasted from the description, typos and all)

A ball named Ultra, was having a picnic with his friends, until King Allo (an alien) kidnapped them to such out their youth and have it all for himself! It's up to you to rescue them. Good luck!

What sort of a name is Ultra? What sort of sad person would call their child/ball that? And how wrinky do you have to be to kidnap people for their youth? Boy, King Allo must have more wrinkles that Donald Trump (I never thought that was possible.)

On a serious note, the story's alright. It's simple, it's realistic (to some extent) and just strange enough to be acceptable. However, I thought a bit more background information would be nice; Why is the ball called Ultra? How does Ultra have friends to go on a picnic on with a name like that? How wrinkly is King Allo? Anyway, I think I've ripped enough holes in the story, so I guess it's gameplay time.

Gameplay (because a lot of elements go into gameplay, I will now analyse them all, before explaining the combinded effect.)

Placement/level design

Looks like we're starting the game with a negative :/ Ultra Ball is a quaint combination of platforming and puzzles (I say puzzles but there's only actually one) and, to put it politely, placement was of a questionable quality.

For a start, every object has the jagged edge option selected. Now, I'm not entirely against that feature; I think that it can create some great atmospheres, if used correctly, but, it can also make a game look a mess. Ultra Ball fell mainly under the second category. There were several magnet sequences is this game were the player must use the magnet feature to get over a pit of spikes, and they felt messy and rushed. There was also a complete overload of extra lives. You could hardly move without bumping into one. As for the level design, the entire game felt cramped and poorly execueted. So, placement and level design are mainly below expectations.

Puzzles/traps

There are no puzzles featured in this game and only one puzzle (providing you don't count the backtracking as a puzzle.) There is a sequence in level six, where the player must use the magnet to smash through a crate to get a star. That puzzle is, as far as I know, original (I don't play many puzzle games, so I map be wrong.)

Difficulty/level progression

This game is far to easy. You an hardly move without getting an extra life or an extra penalty, and it bleeps all the difficulty out of the game; and the spikes are almost harmless. If you land on one, you simply lose a penalty. Considering the fact the spikes look so scary, they should really do more damage. The game continues in a similiar way for a couple of levels, then there's a boss fight (more on that later) and after that the game gets harder, but for all the wrong reasons. On level seven, if you overshot a jump, you'd fall out the map and fail, something which felt sloppy and unfair. Overall, difficulty and level progresion are a disappointment.

Gameplay

The gameplay is all right at places. The first level was probably the best; it has the best level design, gameplay, etc. However, there is a major flaw that runs through the entire game. There are just way to may control features. You can press X to float, and B to smash, and space to turn on the magnet, and it simply doesn't work. I need something like five hands to play comfortably, and, I don't. Another thing I didn't like was the boss battles. They are the simplest, most pointless levels you will ever see. For the first one, you jump above the boss and press B. Done. The second one, you can literaly just do nothing, and laugh as King Allo/lordeldar/Donald Trump breaks the platform and falls to its alien/fluffy bunny/racist death.

Scenery:

The scenery was arguably the est bit of the game. In the first level, your in some sort of forest, and Mario brought this level to live with some amazing scenery. Loads of vines and tree sort of things are in the background, and it looked perfect. Sadly, the scenery didn't last. From that point onwards, the scenery detoirated, from a beautiful forest, to a space background, to a plain, black back drop. It's sad really. If the scenery was more consistent, then the game would be so much better.

Pros:

Brilliant first level

Story

Cons

Lack of consistency

Poor placement

Difficulty

Ratings:

Difficulty/Level Progression **.5

Rank: (Note: I now have a ranking system, so can rank games, according to their ratings. Below is a list of what each score works out at)

Ranking system:

Beast game = 5/5

Feature worthy game = 4/5

Decent game = 3/3

Poor game = 2/5

Bad game = 1/5

I rank this decent

Feature Worthy?

Fix up some placement and consistency issues, and yes.

(Disclaimer: This review does not express the views of sploder.com, but of its facilitities and members. I accept no responsibility for people who throw their tellys/computers/cats down the stairs as a result of reading this)

Peace out.