Spaceball Revolution Review

What do you get when you combine psychedelic color, a groovin' techno soundtrack and racquetball?  Only one of the more unique puzzle experiences to be released in a while.  Spaceball Revolution is exactly that; a puzzle game that combines a bunch of disparate activities into a cohesive, mind bending puzzle game.

Spaceball Revolution has a very basic premise.  Copy a pattern that is shown to you by throwing balls at a wall of squares by aiming with the Wii Remote and pressing A or B.  Hit a square and it lights up.  Hit it again and the light will go out.  If you hit the line between two squares it will light up both squares, and by hitting the corner where four squares connect all of those will light up.  It makes creating pattern a little easier, as well as a little faster and that will be key to mastering this puzzle game.  It starts out very simply by matching a pattern of three or four squares.  Later on it ramps up the number of squares in the pattern and add obstacles to the mix.  Sometimes those obstacles will be directly over a square you need to light up and you have to bank the ball off of the wall, roof or floor.  If you're really good you can bounce the ball off the wall and light multiple squares at once.  As you progress through the game the patterns get more complex, as do the obstacles.  The obstacles go from being a single wall to rotating rods combined with moving squares and more.

Before you even get to a title screen there is a disclaimer that states, "All the levels of this game have been trialled by expert players.  If you can't finish one, practice.  That means the game will get hard, and you can believe it will get very hard by the time you reach the end of the hardest difficulty.  The game is made up of a number of levels, 5 on the easiest difficulty and 15 on advanced.  These levels are in turn made up of five rounds containing 10 puzzles each.  All together there are around 150 puzzles to solve.  The difficulty starts out very nicely and the puzzles are very easy to solve, but even by the end of the easiest difficulty some of the puzzles require amazing hand eye coordination and a good knowledge of geometry.  You will see a number of the same patterns many times, but the obstacles that are added to them keep them fresh each time you see them and they feel very different.  This keeps the game from getting stale quickly.  Each puzzle must be solved in a set time limit.  If you fail to complete them in the amount of time the play field will zoom out making it that much harder to complete the level.  Fail four times and it's game over.  If you can make it to the end of the hardest difficulty it will unlock a Master difficulty, but to be honest I couldn't tell you what is in the master levels, because I could not make it that far.  This game will get hard.  I don't think I can stress that enough.

There are a few differences between the difficulty levels that can make for even more interesting challenges.  The easiest difficulty consists of the first 5 levels of the game.  After each puzzle the board is wiped clean and you start with a blank wall.  The time does not move very fast so you have a little bit of time to plan your moves.  If you bump up to the normal difficulty you'll play through 10 levels of the game, but after each puzzle the pieces are not removed and you have to remove the ones that don't need to be on.  The clock moves a little bit faster than it does on easy.  Advanced consists of all 15 levels and the clock moves very fast.  Other than that, the puzzles are pretty much the same across the difficulty levels you'll just be doing more and doing them faster.  After each level you have a bonus game that you can play to earn more points towards your score.  This is just a game where you thrown Spaceballs at discs floating through space.  It can be hard to judge how to throw them because there is very little in the background to give you references to the speed and distance the discs are from you.

Despite the difficulty it can be a very relaxing game and you will find yourself turning it on if you've got a few minutes to spare.  It's a bit like Tetris in that respect.  It will be very hard to become an expert level player in this game, but it's just fun to bust out for a few minutes at a time every so often.  If you're tired of the single player game you can have a friend join you in some multi-player competition.  This consists of you going through the game like you would in single-player, but both of you are on the screen at the same time.

You will be looking at very bright, flashy backgrounds as well as flashing lights and explosions.  All of this is backed by a techno-rock soundtrack that really gets you into the mood.  It's nothing that you'll find stuck in your head, but it fits very well with the overall presentation of the game.  There are also online leader boards so you can see how you match up against players around the world.

There is an option on the menu for the store, but at the time of this review it wasn't up yet so I can't tell you a lot about it.  There are places on the main menu where you can select bonus levels so I'm assuming that you will use Wii Points in order to purchase additional puzzles in the future.

Spaceball Revolution is a solid puzzle game that has a very unique twist to it.  If you enjoy difficult, mind-bending puzzles or just like throwing balls at a wall this is a worthy addition to your Wii library and will only set you back 800 Nintendo Points.  The pointer is amazingly responsive and accurate, the graphics will twist your mind as much as the puzzles do and you'll just basically enjoy the experience that Spaceball has to offer.  There are only a few things, that I hope make it into the sequel, that could have made this a better experience than it already was.  Those would be the addition of colored boxes, bigger playfields and maybe gameplay hooks such as weird gravity.  Other than that this is about as good a puzzler as you can get.

Final Score: 4/5

Review copy of the game provided by Virtual Toys.