With the popularity of PopCaps’ browser based puzzler, Bejeweled, it was only a matter of time before it was cashed in using mainstream gaming’s current consoles. It has come in the form of Zuma, a leader-board-featuring, trophy-enabled download.
The gameplay is standard puzzling, much like Bejeweled, you must make gems of different colours disappear. In Zuma, the gems are in a constant state of movement, moving a long a specific path towards its yellow “skull” goal. If the gems reach the end of this, it’s game over, though you do have multiple lives in each stage. You control a frog, who shoots gems out of its mouth into the queue of existing gems. The limit of consecutive gems needed to make them disappear is three, but that will only happen upon a player gem entering them, whether you add one blue to two existing blues, or one to a big line of eight.
Cleverly, skillful playing is encouraged through the points system, which will increase your score more by setting up multiple combos, rather than repeating single disappearances. This will be more important to more experienced players, for who completing the game will seem like only the beginning of their climb to top of the points ladder.
Despite a mouse being the superior way of playing these sort of games, using the analogue stick isn’t terrible. PopCap have done well to integrate their style of games into console gaming. It was a much better idea than trying to force Bejeweled onto consoles.
Puzzle games will never be known for story-lines or standout graphical quality. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing where Zuma is concerned, but doesn’t give the more casual of gamers a reason to make the purchase. What is disheartening though, is the lack of modes to play.
Zuma has an Adventure mode and a Gauntlet mode. Adventure mode features many different paths with a limited amount of gems, and as you progress through the stages, the difficulty raises differently each time. At first it’s as simple as the addition of a new colour of ball, but eventually stages have more levels and the speed of the gems increases.
If all this seems exciting then you’ll love the extra special mode at the end, which will ‘complete’ the game and begin the totalling of your final points to be uploaded to the leader-board. If this sounds like you’d find nothing but anger and frustration in Zuma, then more than likely you won’t have enjoyed Bejeweled either and will be better off saving your money.
Replay value comes in the form of the game’s second mode, Gauntlet mode. Going back to previously completed levels, you can either simply replay the level for practice purposes, or play endlessly with the difficulty increasing with time, making for an interesting survival mode. It isn’t a whole lot, there could have been a few more modes, but they wouldn’t have added too much to the amount of variation here.
In the world of puzzle games this has the pedigree and quality to be a welcome addition to your virtual collection. It’s not perfect due to PopCap missing out on the opportunity to introduce multi-player to their puzzling games, especially on consoles, but it’s a great start to what will hopefully be the beginning of a series of great Puzzle games.
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