Sep 30, 2009

[Games] Zuma's Revenge

When Flash-based games get popular enough, they actually warrant sequels whether this is just for the free version online or for the paid versions one can download. And thus many gaming franchises have been born online and now we are all familiar with Bejeweled and Diner Dash in all their incarnations.

Then you get those games that geeks like us love but then they never seem to pick up on them and return to add on to them. Or so we think, at least.

I always loved Zuma and once thought that the game couldn't get any better, and thus the reason nothing was ever added to it. The concept was simple - a frog rotates around a dais and shoots different colored balls in order to make patterns of at least 3 balls of one color. Sure, it's not that logical in a real-world sense, but it is fairly simple.

This is one of those times I'm happy I was proven wrong.

Zuma's Revenge is the long-awaited sequel of that classic arcade game. Yes, you're still a frog but this time there are new stage concepts, new game modes, new special shots and a whole lot of fun. They certainly found many ways to expand the gameplay in order to warrant a $20 price tag.

Zuma's Revenge


There are some key things about the new version that I like the most:

Boss Battles - You now have to defeat different tiki guardians in major stages that require you to both form the usual Zuma patterns but also to shoot between the gaps between balls (Zuma players know these as Gap Shots) in order to hit the bosses under different conditions. It's a unique kind of stage that adds a healthy amount of difficulty to the game.

New Shots - Of course we expected them to add new shots to the player's arsenal beyond just the slow and reverse shots. Now you have shots that let you destroy one ball at a time (in order to trigger combos), or destroy all balls of a single color or even a tri-shot that fires once like a shot gun in order to clear several lanes of balls.

Alternative Game Stage Designs - In he original Zuma, you were always trapped in one part of the screen and left to deal with the balls rotating around you. In Revenge, you'll find yourself at the bottom of the screen scrolling left to right or in stages that have two dais for you to position yourself given there's a wall divides the stage into two partitions.

There's a lot more than just this that makes the game fun and it will certainly warrant hours and hours of gameplay. It's not for the faint of heart given the stages do get insanely difficult at times even during your first run through and naturally hardcore gamers are bound to aim to "Ace" each stage for more points.

Zuma's Revenge is a great sequel to a gaming classic and gets 4 evil Tiki guardians out of a possible 5.




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