Game Reviews

Marble Blast Mobile

Star onStar onStar halfStar offStar off
Get
Marble Blast Mobile

Whatever happened to old-fashioned marbles? Flicking marbles in a game of ringer has long been replaced by flicks of a touchscreen; keepsies are no longer awarded in cool-looking marbles but in virtual medals.

Marble Blast Mobile rolls with the new marble crew, whose touchscreen and motion control antics attempt to introduce sophistication into the age-old game. Unrefined controls and a stiff level of difficulty, however, may have you calling quitsies.

Instead of collecting marbles, your goal is to collect gems by guiding a marble through 20 labyrinthine courses. You do this using either a pair of virtual analogue sticks or the accelerometer to navigate the myriad obstacles in each level. From circumventing holes in the ground to jumping across platforms, and even speeding up steep inclines, there's a wide range of challenges across the game's levels.

The levels are excessively challenging in a number of ways. Firstly, gems are predictably placed in the most precarious spots in any given level. While natural to a point, this mode of design has been taken to the extreme with ridiculous leaps and exacting precision required to complete even the earliest levels.

Secondly, many levels can't be completed without relying on special items. A spring power-up, for instance, is frequently needed to hop your marble onto platforms that aren't accessible any other way. These also demand a level of precision that makes levels designed around specific items reliably frustrating.

Lastly, medals for each level reward speed. The time for earning a bronze medal on most stages is entirely too strict: it isn't uncommon to add a minute or two to the base time your first playthrough. Just finishing the level at all seems worthy of a reward.

This point is made all the more aggravating when you consider that later levels can only be unlocked by acquiring medals.

Imperfect controls exacerbate the inferior level design. Using touchscreen controls, the left stick has difficulty responding to input other than forward and backward. Turns, as a result, are made by adjusting the camera with the right stick.

This would be workable if responsiveness wasn't a problem. Unfortunately, the controls aren't anywhere near as agile as needed to surmount the obscene challenges laid before you. Resort to the accelerometer and matters improve slightly.

Multiplayer gives Marble Blast Mobile its only strong point. A total of ten levels support up to four players in simultaneous ad-hoc (local wireless) play.

Collecting points by picking up the yellow gems that appear is the objective, a clock counting down the remainder of the match. The controls will still annoy and match settings have been omitted, but the competitive element does wash away some of the frustration that mars the single player side.

Even when generously accounting for multiplayer and assuming acclimation to the controls over time, Marble Blast Mobile still fails with deficient level design. The stages are too difficult to be enjoyable, and the requirements for unlocking new levels are too demanding to encourage replay. This is one game to think twice about before knuckling down.

Marble Blast Mobile

Inventive multiplayer keeps Marble Blast Mobile rolling along, though imperfect controls and inferior level design provide too many bumps along the way for a recommendation
Score
Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.