That's the sound of fun dying
| Platform | Presentation | Controls | Variety | Audio | Depth | Value & Fun | OVERALL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Super Nintendo Entertainment System | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | 2.00 | 0.10 | 0.53 |
| Gameplay Description |
| Kablooey is a puzzle game in which your goal is to detonate all the bombs and mines on the level without blowing yourself up. How the tiles that you are able to walk on are set, where the bombs are placed and how large those bombs are all play into the logic you must use to solve each puzzle. If you take a step that is not onto a tile and is off onto the blue ground underneath, you lose and have to start the level again. There is no battery save, so passwords are used. |
| Dedication Meter | 99.00 |
| To play this game as apparently intended, you have to spend an ungodly amount of time testing everything and figuring out what does what and what goes where. It's beyond reason and beyond entertainment. Even the controls you have to spend a lot of time with. The only thing holding this back from 100% is that anyone can play this game; I just wouldn't suggest it. | |
| Presentation | 0.00 |
|
On the surface, the visuals are mediocre to fair. Isometric 3D viewpoint of a generic strange blue character on a tiled floor consisting of red spheres, grey mines, and odd brown bouncing/spinning balls. It takes some adjustment to follow what everything means, but overall merely the aesthetic assessment of the graphics come across as good enough. However, there is a massive problem underneath. You have a narrow viewpoint when moving around the map, and once you get very far at all into the game, you'll need to see more. In fact, even in the first few levels it's rather critical to see more. There is an option to do this by pressing Start and seeing an overhead view. But here lies another problem--you can't scroll the map. The map doesn't show everything, and by level 30, you can't see enough of the board to solve the puzzles. You can switch back to the isometric view and move, then press start again, but it doesn't move much, and when moving downward, you can actually see more of the bottom of the level in the isometric view. It effectively breaks the game. There are even more problems. There are switches and warp tiles--except you can't tell where the warp tiles will send you, nor what the switch does (unless you immediately see it when you flip it). If just a graphical tweak were made to show these things, this game could have become something worthwhile. |
|
| Controls | 0.00 |
|
It will take you at least a half hour to merely not walk off a tile in the wrong direction into the blue background of death in each level. While you press up/down/left/right to move on the board, down actually moves you diagonally down-left in the isometric view. An absolute pain to begin with, but if you stick with the game for a bit, you can adjust. What's annoying with the ability to walk off the edge of the level is that it seems it's merely a way to let the user quit as that's not an option any other way. If the developer had added that, perhaps that mishap wouldn't have to occur at all. Where the game loses all merit in controls is that there's no way to scroll the map. I mentioned it in graphics, but it's a massive, massive problem. This is a puzzle game with a need to view the level to figure out what to do--except you can't see the entire level in most levels 30+. The controls can act as a microcosm of what is wrong with this game. You hold A to do the countdown to detonate a bomb, then you move before it explodes. Okay, that makes sense. However, EVERYTHING you do has a 3 second countdown. Flipping switches, taking control of remote detonators, err...well that's all you CAN do in the game. |
|
| Variety | 0.50 |
|
There are 130 levels to play through that become quite complex. On top of that there are a couple enemies (both act the same, though), mines, controllable vehicles that can remotely detonate bombs, all on top of the various sizes of bombs that you will find. There are even some bombs that will continually change in size. There are also three types of tiles: plain (breaks upon a blast), enforced (withstands a blast), and ice (you slide across until reaching a different type of tile or go off the edge). This is all nice until, again, the game becomes unplayable from level 30 on when everything becomes endless trial-and-error. And the learning curve is so steep that many of those are wasted just building up a tolerance for the horrible level of polish. |
|
| Audio | 1.00 |
| There are three sound effects and one song in the game, at least, and 5 sound effects with two songs at best. The song is absolutely dreadful with the repeated "Get ready. Get ready. GGGGGGet ready get ready gggggget ready" voice over on top of the brutal techno-style track. I merely give it credit for having the technology of voice-over for a SNES game and sound effects for all your actions (which albeit are few). | |
| Depth | 2.00 |
| When you can see the level, there are good puzzles to wrap your mind around. The only problem is that 80% of the time you can't see the puzzle. | |
| Value & Fun | 0.10 |
|
While the game has 130 levels to play through, that's not going to happen for anyone who's not the absolute most bored person to ever live (and has absolutely NOTHING else to do and doesn't have a copy of Superman 64 to play). I said it before, I'll say it again, the game is only worthwhile up to level 30, after which I consider it broken. Up to level 15-20 is spent getting used to everything (mainly the controls) so that leaves 10-15 levels of puzzle-solving mediocrity. What adds insult to injury about the design of Kablooey is that while you're wandering around testing switches and warp places, and finding out whether a long series of ice tiles leads off the edge of the level or not, there's a timer counting down that ensures your failure even if you survive that test period. There is a section of about 5 levels that is genuinely entertaining because of some rather good puzzle design, and makes it all the more a slap in the face that everything else is absolutely terrible. |
|
| Overall | 0.53 |
| Ouch, it's the game that hurts. You may rather take a blast from one of those bombs than play this game. What's really bad about the game is that, while classic terrible games such as Superman 64 were clearly just plain horrible with nothing of substance there, Kablooey actually has a good puzzle game hidden underneath a layer of horrendous game design. Just a decent menu system would have done wonders. Instead, there is basically no way to play this game all the way through. If anything, all hail the worst thing I've ever played. | |
Posted by Ellyoda Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:00
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phantom_leo (12s)
Password saves... I put in two GBA games the other night to play them (Avatar: Air Bender and Hello Kitty: Party Rescue) and they had that. F' it. I'm not doing that.
I can;t believe you played more than 30 levels of this game!
Plus I saw your video and it looked like it had some puzzles that actually worked, I probably would have given the game a 1.5 or a 2.