PSTP Gaming Network

WARNING: This game features balls touching, so it may be considered gay by the ignorant.

Okay, now that we took that out of the way, we can actually see what this little game has to offer. Fist of all, most of you might think that this is a rip-off of Marble Blast, which might also lead you to think that it’s a rip-off of Super Monkey Ball, which will then lead you to the NES game Marble Madness, which may be called the “Father” of all Marble and… umm… “Ball” games that have graced countless consoles and PC’s.

But anyway, I think it is erroneous to call Switchball a simple Rip-off, because even if it carries the same basic idea of all marble games (Roll around and finish the level) it relies more on puzzle solving than the “Hurry up and get to the finish” idea of Marble Blast. But just how do you solve puzzles with nothing more than a ball? Well, that’s the magic of the game, it makes you think on how to make a piece of plywood stay stiff and not move everywhere it wants to so that you may pass over it; maybe you can push a box underneath so that it stays put, but that box may be to heavy to push, and that’s where the “switch” in “Switchball” comes in. You see, there are some sort of stations that let you change into different balls that get different job’s get done, for example:

Metal Ball: It’ll let you push heavy objects and break through stuff.

Air Ball: As the name suggests, it is a very lightweight ball that let’s you go up hills very easily.

Dash Ball: You can charge up the ball so that it gives you a small dash.

And there are more besides these ones, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

After you finish a level, you are awarded medals, and depending on how fast you cleread the level, you get either a bronze, silver or gold medal. Besides the fun of solving puzzles (which no matter how hard they become, they are still more challenging than annoying), the games has some nice visuals and physics to support it, the music is okay but it’s not a killer soundtrack. And the levels have a nice length to it without making them boring and repetitive. Oh, and for those achievement whores out there, the achievements are not so difficult to achieve (most of them are for single player and the rest are multiplayer.

Now, the game is fun and giggles but it has 2 very annoying weak points which are the camera and the control. The camera suffers from the “what-the-fuck-i-can’t-see-shit” syndrome, it manages to annoy the hell out of you even though it has 3 types of angles which are the “fixed angle“, the “free angle” and the “behind you” angle. The fixed angle supposedly chooses the best angle for the position you are currently in, but instead of helping, it just annoys you by placing itself behind a box or an obstacle limiting you viewing field. The behind you (or more appropriately named “second person” camera) is like the normal camera in Marble Blast, except that you can’t really move the camera in a 360 angle, it just stays behind you and you may only move a bit of nothing to the left and right, because everyone knows that that is very fucking useful. And finally, the free angle (as the name states) let’s you control the camera as you may damn well please, you may zoom in, zoom out, go left, right, up and down, which is the camera you will use during the whole time but gets fucked up by one annoying game feature, which changes the camera type in game whether you like it or not which will lead to a sudden fall or time loss, making you repeat the whole damn level, which made me rip my own face off and then proceed to fuck a trash can.

But even though there are only 2 annoyances, they really do fuck up the main enjoyment of the game and lower the overall score of the game, therefore I give it 7 marbles out of a possible 10.

Fuck off! I’m going to play some Marble Blast.

Posted in Games, XBOX 360