Reviews
Madballs! It warrants an exclamation mark because anyone who grew up in the 80s will say it with the same level of delight as if remembering an early childhood friend whom you never saw again after the 2nd grade. My classmates and I collected these ugly little balls back in the late 80s when yo-yos had just become passé. And I can’t for the life of me remember why. From memory, they did nothing. Just rubbery balls you could throw around (but you didn’t in case you scratched them), you couldn’t bounce them because they weren’t perfectly round due to a protruding eyeball or tumour, so you just stuffed it in your schoolbag until you needed to show it to other kids that you had one too. I guess that’s why the fad never lasted. And now 20 years later an XBLA game, Madballs in… Babo: Invasion, resurrects the brand and it’s a shooter no less. WTFs ensue…
The game is viewed from a top down view on a 3D plane and is best described as Marble Madness with guns. The puzzle aspect is basically a mix of platforming and opening up locked doorways to progress to the next area with some enemies and boss fights thrown in. The single player campaign begins by choosing your Mad Ball from a healthy selection of varying abilities, most of which are initially locked. After a brief tutorial on how to control your ball (if you guessed ‘by rolling around’ then 10 points to you) and powering up your dash ability you’re thrown into the main campaign. The story is developed through various checkpoints and activating terminals or picking up journals you can read but basically your mission is to rid some baddy or other. Although I only skimmed through most of it, the interstellar plotline isn’t going to make Bioware lose any sleep at night. Your Madball’s firepower, and this is something that would have made the toys so much cooler, is determined by attaching a gun to its side. Weapons can only be loaded one at a time although there are 2 modes of fire, some of which need to be unlocked. Various weapon pickups are littered around the levels although most of these are locked on your first playthrough. To aid you on certain obstacles you can enlist the help of transformation towers, which can change you into a different state (such as hardened armour) but some of these need to be unlocked to use them. The overall level design and feel reminds me of some old-school Commodore 64 games like Wizball and Parallax. The physics are well done and you have to be mindful of the weight and inertia of your Madball and some puzzles will require some delicate thumbwork. The earlier levels are a little staid however so stick with it. Besides tackling the environment you have to strategise your attack options as certain enemies are immune to certain attacks. For example a purple enemy will be impervious to your purple lasers and since you can only carry one weapon, you will need to plan your loadout at each checkpoint.
After completing the single player campaign (or after getting bored of it) you can hop into what is arguably the best bit about Madballs, multiplayer. Along with the inclusion of Campaign co-op (up to four), Capture the Flag, VS Deathmatch, etc. there is a great Invasion mode where teams begin the map by tailoring their side of the map and choosing base stations. Games are mostly smooth and frantic with a huge selection of maps and are generally lag free most of the time even with upwards of 10 players in the game. New players will feel a little disadvantaged though as most of the better guns and upgrades are locked until you play more and unlock them. Some guy with an oversized Madball and insane machine gun was piling up the kills and owning everyone else with something like 56 kills and only 15 deaths. Avatar mode allows you to use your own Xbox Live Avatar, albeit just your decapitated head, in your online battles in lieu of the Madballs. Although your head doesn’t “roll” as such, it simply glides along the map. Seeing your decapitated head with a flamethrower wedged in your ear and laying waste to other decapitated heads is equal parts cool and disturbing.
The fragfest does have its downers however. There were some lag issues on packed games but Madballs isn’t about headshot precision anyway so it’s not that big a deal. The top down viewpoint or zoomed in isometric view don’t allow you to see very far ahead so you don’t get to see much of the map. Snipers best stick to Call of Duty. You do get the chance to sneak up on someone however given that you can see ¾ of the screen in front of you where you aim your targeting reticule and only ¼ of the screen is shown behind you. Ninjas can still apply here, although not for long as the battles quickly turn into something akin to top-down Super Smash Brothers. You also run into problems when the enemy is on higher ground than you and makes targeting a little ungainly which is prevalent in the campaign mode as well. At least the level design is good, puzzles are the right difficulty for the campaign, colours are vibrant, sound effects are suitably bassy and environments brimming with psychedelic mayhem. The content that’s packed into this XBLA game for 800 MS points rivals that of some full priced titles thanks to its solid multiplayer modes. One word of warning, if you have an aversion to unlocking stuff, then steer far, far away.
Xboxzone Score: 7.5/10
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