Back when Xbox Live Arcade was in its infancy, Zuma was released and console players were treated to it’s quirky style and addictive game-play. Zuma’s Revenge, it’s the long awaited sequel, has finally made its way onto the marketplace now, and vies once again to absorb all your time.
Title: Zuma’s Revenge
Publisher: PopCap Games
Developer: PopCap Games
Platform: Xbox 360, DS, PC, iOS
Genre: Puzzle Game
Release Date: July 11, 2012
Price: 800 MSP ($10.00) (Publisher Provided)
Rating: E
Zuma, from the masters of time sinks PopCap Games, is a game that most “hardcore” gamers will never admit to playing, let alone that it ruled their lives for months. It had a simple “match three” style of game-play with a bit of a twist. Instead of just a static board that required the player to hunt out matches, Zuma would string brightly colored balls moving at a steady pace around the player. It was a bit of a mash-up of Bejeweled, and Bust-A-Move. I lay all that out here because I honestly and truly (despite my previous statement) have never played this game before. Seriously.
Zuma’s Revenge is a return to what the original game had already put in place. I hesitate to say that there is any “story” involved here, outside of the fact that there is a frog, an island, and apparently a really ticked off tiki god. Zuma’s Revenge has you making your way through the puzzles, of varying layouts that get progressively trickier, if not harder. Progression to the end of each “stage” will pit you against a “Boss Battle”. Here, the layout changes a bit, as does the strategy. Where normally you would rotate around a fixed point (sometimes two) to take shots at the colored balls, you now move on a horizontal plane. The end goal here is not to clear out all the balls, but to make a gap in the string big enough to shot a ball at the boss and knock its energy down to zero. Bosses don’t sit idly by and let you attack them however. They have their own defenses. Some will cause your controls to invert, some will make all the colored balls flash different colors. This creates scenarios where a boss fight could take anywhere from a few seconds up to fifteen minuets.
I will be open and honest with everyone here, I am not very good at these games. I don’t think my brain is wired to play games like Zuma. I can steady my gun and snipe a dude from across the battlefield, but if you ask me to match three items quickly over and over, I’m out. Zuma’s Revenge tries to give the player a bit of an edge here, which I appreciate. As you progress through the game you will unlock “Spirits” that will give you buffs. Things like more points to items, faster shots and a better chance for power-ups. Wining medals based on time and score become currency that you can then dump on these spirits to raise their potency. It gives you just enough edge to make it a bit further in the game and never “breaks” the game by making it a cake-walk.
Aside from the normal “Adventure” mode, there are several other modes to keep players coming back for more. There is “Boss Rush” which pits you against the bosses of the game in back to back succession. There is “Iron Frog” which is a series of ten stages with no extra lives should you fail. Finally, and probably most importantly, there is the “Weekly Challenges” mode. Here players are given a set of challenges that will net them leader-board fame. All of these pad out the games playtime a bit better than the original Zuma.
Zuma’s Revenge is a puzzle game. There isn’t much need for flashy, fancy, over-the-top graphics but that doesn’t stop it from looking great. Backgrounds are cheery and bright and full of color. The bosses taunt you as you progress through stages as well as during their own boss fights. I guess I could just say “Hey, it’s a PopCap Game” and let their track record speak for itself really.
Zuma’s Revenge is one of those puzzle games that really gives you that “one more time” feeling. I started playing it the other morning and would run into a wall, over and over again in my level progression. However, I always managed to get past the sticking point simply by playing more and more of it. It’s addictive, it looks great and the simple controls are easy for even the most basic of players to pick up and go. Perhaps if I keep investing my time with Zuma’s Revenge I can become a more balanced, well rounded player. I just need to play this one stage, one more time.
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