Arkanoid clone that skips the blocks, but manages to skip out on most of the fun too.
If the name Magic Ball strikes you as somewhat bland, then I guess you're already prepared for how the game actually plays. It's not that I found Magic Ball to be all that horrible, in fact, as far as Breakout/Arkanoid style games go, I suppose it's fairly original. However, I found it to be a bit of a chore to go thru the two episodes included, and I was slightly miffed that the game pretty much tells you that you're going to be paying for DLC down the road to get anything close to a full game experience out of it.
Magic Ball uses the Arkanoid formula of a ball and paddle used in tandem to break away bits of obstacles on the playing field. This time, instead of funky colored blocks, the playground is populated with various things, like Knights, Pirates, Dragons, bits of hedge, rocks, pumpkins, flowers and a variety of other debris. There are two episodes to play, with 24 different stages in each episode. The Episodes themselves are basically themes, with the first one being a Pirate/Ocean theme, and the second containing a medieval fantasy setting.
As the player, you control the paddle by moving it left or right with the left analog or the D-Pad, and you launch your initial ball into the fray with the press of the X button. From there it's a matter of bouncing the ball back and forth across the area, attempting to obliterate every piece of everything on the map, with the end result being a small level end icon that falls from the top that you need to "catch" with your paddle device. Of course, it's not quite as simple as this. There are a variety of power-ups in the game that randomly drop down from the playing field as you destroy objects. Certain things obviously have positive effects, like the iron ball which just pummels thru anything it touches instead of simply bouncing back, or the magnet that allows you to catch and shoot the ball at will. However, other power-ups, like the mini-ball or crazy ball ones, are considerably less helpful. Then there's an actual token that drops that will literally take away a life, so you don't want to go about grabbing everything you see.
Likewise, certain objects that you can hit on the playing field will cause different effects, like the fountain that causes the crazy ball power-up instantly, or the volcano that turns your ball into a bomb until it hits something else. Every so often you'll pull off a combo move that will add a few more points to your final tally, and occasionally a bonus coin will drop that will have pretty much the same effect. With each episode containing 24 levels, you'll find a pretty big variety in how the stages are set up, but once you manage to reach that halfway point you'll realize that the actual objects being used are pretty limited. Later levels become pretty annoying as well, with a limited amount of room between the obstacles and the paddle itself, causing you to lose before you really get started, and while I appreciate the idea of putting some challenge into the game, it's a pretty frustrating experience later on.
There's a multiplayer option as well, and then the leaderboards that keep track of scores. You can continue as much as you want, but each time you're granted three lives. If you manage to lose all three (or however many you've gained), you have the option of completely starting over and getting your three lives back on the level you left off at, sacrificing your total score, or simply starting the level over again, score intact, but with the exact number of lives you had available when you reached that stage.
The game is very bright and vibrant, and looks pretty nice on a 1080p set, but there's little movement or anything exceptionally impressive with the visuals. Most of the objects you hit are pretty much static, and the only way they'll move is by simply falling over or bouncing off of your ball. Likewise, there is some limited music in the game, and of course the FX noises of your ball bouncing off of various structures, but it's hardly impressive or noteworthy.
All together, I found Magic Ball to be pretty bland, and to top things off the game tells you that it's to be continued, with spots already reserved for additional episodes, obviously meaning that there's some DLC down the road. With only two different themes to look at across 24 stages (48 total), it ends up getting pretty boring really fast, and I can't really recommend it to most. If you have a particular taste for Arkanoid style gameplay, than I suppose it'll appeal to you, but in the long run it's a game with a very limited scope.
