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IGN Review of Magnetica
It's better known to contemporary gamers as Zuma as PopCap's design has exploded on the PC as well as a downloadable Xbox 360 title. But in reality, Puzz Loop's the name of the game, and Magnetica is the official follow-up to Mitchell's near-decade old action puzzle creation. On the Nintendo DS, the team actually improves the game with clever, intuitive control that makes sense, and the entire production's beefed out with plenty of stuff to do in both single and multiplayer modes.
Magnetica, and Puzz Loop before it, definitely has Bust-a-Move to thank for its inspiration, because the two games definitely share a few initial similarities. The idea is to knock out balls rolling on a track by shooting similar colored balls at the string - linking three or more balls of the same color will remove them from the train. More importantly, same colored balls are magnetically attracted to each other - remove a large gap of spheres from play and, if you played your balls right, the chain can be sucked back to meet the rest of the chain if the two end balls match. If the train of balls manage to make it to the end of the channel, the game's over, so it's in your best interest to create the best combos possible to remove as many balls in one shot as possible. Some time-assisting power-ups manage to make their way into the string of colored pearls; some slow the train down, others send the stack backwards a good distance to give the player some breathing room. Put all this in motion and you've got one energetic puzzle game - it's quite a rush when you've laid out the balls in such a fashion that one more well-placed sphere causes a cascade effect, removing more than half the field away in a seven-string combo or more.
The Nintendo DS version of the design is unique in the sense that control is now touch-screen focused, giving players a very intuitive command of the ball-shooter. Players now "flick" the colored ball from the shooter to the chain with the stylus, which differs from the original game design's "rotate and fire" control. After playing the Nintendo DS game for several hours now, I don't want to go back to the old way - flicking the balls is a motion that feels perfect for the Puzz Loop design since the balls pretty much go exactly where I'm telling them to go. And since it does take the ball a split second to fly from the dispenser to the string, this touch screen control feels a lot easier to lead the targets to pop the balls into place.
The game's admittedly a one-trick pony that's extended to many different game modes, but none of these modes feels artificially created as simple bulletpoints to beef out the feature list. Challenge Mode is essentially this game's Marathon where an endless string of balls wanders through specific coiling paths at increasing speeds. Quest Mode is a surprisingly extensive production with dozens upon dozens of different level layouts, some of which intertwine and overlap, and some even offer multiple firing points. Puzzle challenges players to complete several dozen layouts of balls with a specific, limited ball set to flick at them.
Then there's the two player Versus Mode, which only requires a single cartridge to play. Multiplayer Magnetica isn't what you'd call "creative" but it does its job and can get quite hectic between two people who really know how to string the combos. In this mode, combos will send dummy balls to the other person, and the upper screen displays the other person's stack so you can see how much you're screwing him up. On occasion power-ups will wander into play, like touch-screen specific black holes that'll show up on the other person's field, or rubbery creatures that will deflect his balls. And, once again, the microphone's used as a "Breath Sensor" in a DS game - if the opponent activates an Ion cloud on your screen, you'll have to blow onto the system to clear the mist so you can see your field.
Mitchell definitely went the minimalist side when bringing its Puzz Loop game to the Nintendo DS, as the game features a very simple 2D graphic design, and there's really no context to the environment that players are in. Not that this is all that necessary, but when you've got the popular ripoff Zuma taking the full spotlight on this game design, you'd think the originators might want to spruce up the visual appeal instead of making what many North American gamers may think is just "a blander Zuma."
©2006-06-05, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Magnetica, and Puzz Loop before it, definitely has Bust-a-Move to thank for its inspiration, because the two games definitely share a few initial similarities. The idea is to knock out balls rolling on a track by shooting similar colored balls at the string - linking three or more balls of the same color will remove them from the train. More importantly, same colored balls are magnetically attracted to each other - remove a large gap of spheres from play and, if you played your balls right, the chain can be sucked back to meet the rest of the chain if the two end balls match. If the train of balls manage to make it to the end of the channel, the game's over, so it's in your best interest to create the best combos possible to remove as many balls in one shot as possible. Some time-assisting power-ups manage to make their way into the string of colored pearls; some slow the train down, others send the stack backwards a good distance to give the player some breathing room. Put all this in motion and you've got one energetic puzzle game - it's quite a rush when you've laid out the balls in such a fashion that one more well-placed sphere causes a cascade effect, removing more than half the field away in a seven-string combo or more.
The Nintendo DS version of the design is unique in the sense that control is now touch-screen focused, giving players a very intuitive command of the ball-shooter. Players now "flick" the colored ball from the shooter to the chain with the stylus, which differs from the original game design's "rotate and fire" control. After playing the Nintendo DS game for several hours now, I don't want to go back to the old way - flicking the balls is a motion that feels perfect for the Puzz Loop design since the balls pretty much go exactly where I'm telling them to go. And since it does take the ball a split second to fly from the dispenser to the string, this touch screen control feels a lot easier to lead the targets to pop the balls into place.
The game's admittedly a one-trick pony that's extended to many different game modes, but none of these modes feels artificially created as simple bulletpoints to beef out the feature list. Challenge Mode is essentially this game's Marathon where an endless string of balls wanders through specific coiling paths at increasing speeds. Quest Mode is a surprisingly extensive production with dozens upon dozens of different level layouts, some of which intertwine and overlap, and some even offer multiple firing points. Puzzle challenges players to complete several dozen layouts of balls with a specific, limited ball set to flick at them.
Then there's the two player Versus Mode, which only requires a single cartridge to play. Multiplayer Magnetica isn't what you'd call "creative" but it does its job and can get quite hectic between two people who really know how to string the combos. In this mode, combos will send dummy balls to the other person, and the upper screen displays the other person's stack so you can see how much you're screwing him up. On occasion power-ups will wander into play, like touch-screen specific black holes that'll show up on the other person's field, or rubbery creatures that will deflect his balls. And, once again, the microphone's used as a "Breath Sensor" in a DS game - if the opponent activates an Ion cloud on your screen, you'll have to blow onto the system to clear the mist so you can see your field.
Mitchell definitely went the minimalist side when bringing its Puzz Loop game to the Nintendo DS, as the game features a very simple 2D graphic design, and there's really no context to the environment that players are in. Not that this is all that necessary, but when you've got the popular ripoff Zuma taking the full spotlight on this game design, you'd think the originators might want to spruce up the visual appeal instead of making what many North American gamers may think is just "a blander Zuma."
©2006-06-05, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved