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Ballistic
1.0 By Megasoft 2000
Some times it
is the simpler things in life that bring a smile to our face - and Megasoft 2000 has brought us another one. This game,
Ballistic, is one of the simplest games I think I have ever played and yet
the design of the game made it very addictive and one of the more enjoyable
games I have tried on the Clié.
To put it in
simple terms, Ballistic is one of the group of games out there (Astraware's Bejeweled game
immediately comes to mind) where the object of the game is to group 3 or
more like items in order for them to disappear. It also has a touch of the
game Dynomite (another excellent game by Astraware) in that you are in control of the placement
of the items, but not in the order. Where Dynomite
has the "eggs" being launched from the bottom via a slingshot,
Ballistic approaches game play from the other direction and puts colored balls into play from the top.
Let's start
at the beginning. When you first open the program up you are given the
opportunity to choose a difficulty rating from 1-5 and what type game you
wish to play, Practice or Progressive. The Practice game will allow you to
continue playing at the same difficulty setting that you have chosen but
the Progressive mode gradually increases the difficulty as the game
progresses. (Scores obtained in Practice mode are not kept in the High
Scores database.)
The main part
of the screen is made up of what is made to look like a large glass jar
with a pipe and plunger mounted to the right side. Colored
balls are thrown into the jar by pulling down on the plunger with your
stylus and releasing it or simply tapping on the level of the spring where
you wish to release the plunger. Based on the amount of force behind the
plunger, the ball located at the top will fly out of the pipe and into the
glass jar with different speeds causing it to land, hopefully, where you've
aimed it. As you can see, the colors are vibrant
and the quality of the sound is just as good.
Note: the
balls being shot into the jar behave exactly as they would in real life. If
you shoot them too hard, for example, they will bounce off the far wall or
other balls. The action is so realistic, in fact, that you will find
yourself tilting the screen of your Clié
in a futile attempt to get the ball to roll one way or another.
The game
gives you a few more options than just having three like color balls in a straight line. True, you can match
three in a horizontal or diagonal line (you can't have vertical matches
based on how the balls arrange themselves…), but you can also have
them in a triangle as displayed by the red balls shown below.
The game play
continues until you have completely filled the glass container with
unmatched balls or if you otherwise get into a situation where no more balls
can exit the pipe. The game does not offer a lot as far as options go. Like
I said, It's a very simple game. It does, however, offer hours of addictive
game play on a game that is simple to learn, takes skill to master, and is,
in my opinion, quite deserving of the $14.95 price tag. If you enjoy Bejeweled type games, give this one a try as well..
If I had one
complaint about the program it would be the lack of ability to input a
player's name in the High Score screen. It does display the time and date
the score was made, sorted by high score, but offers no option for telling
who has the high score. Another nice feature would to be the ability to
play this in full-screen mode on 320x480 screens.
Quality:
100
Stability:
95
Originality:
80
Looks:
95
Value:
90
TOTAL:
92
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