Once upon the time it was fun and original game. However game had died with Xbox 360 console and nobody is playing this game anymore. It is not worth the trouble creating LAN parties, single player content is exceedingly mediocre and unfortunately, there is simply no point of why you should try this game today.
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Calicifer’s Reviews
Once a fun little game
It is one of those games which I always regretted for not playing more when it was popular. I remembered it fondly and it certainly was fun playing this game with my friends in CO-OP. Unfortunately, I had waited for too long and this game is dead.What it has rolling for it?
Back when I was in high school there was a lot fewer original games. I was amazed by the fact that your character is a rolling ball and you have a third person camera shooter with special abilities and classes. Game felt unique and amazing. It certainly was unique for the time as there were quite few mainstream games which were this creative in times when Team Fortress 2 could be considered fresh, innovating, groundbreaking with its own classes and cartoonish graphics.Game had significant player-base, mostly due to strong console presence. It prospered during XBOX 360 days and was very popular game on XBOX Live Arcade. I do not know if there was a cross over with PC community, but servers were teeming with life. Game was a hit, everyone enjoyed playing it until…it just died. Game died as console gamers moved a generation ahead and developers never shown an interest in further supporting and developing their own game.
Rolling Down the Hill
I do have few good memories with this game and I did enjoy playing this game in LAN with my friends. Unfortunately, I will have to advise other players from playing this game. The main attraction – multiplayer is dead. Other game modes either feel unfinished or are just plain bad.Tedious and grindy campaign
- Campaign is nothing to write home about. Story is nonsensical and it is unclear what we are exactly doing from mission to mission. It is just gleefully killing enemies and then we must acquire some super duper plot device which in truth gives us anything we want. It is just a terrible plot which goes nowhere which anybody could write.
Campaign itself is too long and tedious. Later on it just spams you with enemies. Every damn room is filled with bullet spongy enemies which makes this game annoying to beat. Initially there is a small element of secret hunting, but levels are linear, plot is terrible and levels drag on with bullet spongy enemies.
Game has little variety in its own enemies or gameplay. At one point I thought that game mixed it up a little when I was teleported supposedly on my own on an ice planet. I went to explore it and it was refreshing to fight wildlife or rather simpler enemies for once. However, quickly unpolished nature of this game showed up when my Madball rolled on spikes and I was forces to go all the way back. This is when I discovered that I did not needed to do any of that and my comrades were just around the corner. I tried to make game fun for nothing. I tried to collect keys for nothing.
Movement Pushback - This game has a strange sensation. Your character is seemingly pushed backwards when it hits some surfaces. This creates an awful, unpolished feeling. What I missed in this game were actual rolling mechanics. There is no such thing in this game, your character loses their momentum instantly, it can’t speed up nor even heaviest Madballs have an issue in changing direction. However, when they hit random terrain elements in a map, they can instantly be stopped. It seems to be a bug where engine registers total stop of a character when you expect to still have sideways momentum and to keep on rolling.
Issues with gameplay
This game has countless smaller issues which adds up to game feeling unfinished, unpolished, cheap. They could be hints what company should improve if they ever would want to create a sequel. These points are also illustrated in my video.Sliding Mechanics
- Surfaces in this game have no friction. You are free to slide around terrain. It adds up to unsatisfactory movement which characters in this game has. Rolling resistance, sliding in some areas, these things could had significantly lightened up this game and made it more unique than it is.
Confusing Score Screen - As it says in the title, score which you get at the end of a level is hard to decipher. Sometimes you get no points for killing enemies. There are no details explaining why you scored as well as you did.
Cheating enemy movement - Enemy seems to cheat in this game. It can go through impossible to travel terrain. This can create quite frustrating experiences in the campaign where enemies will simply roll through unreachable terrain out out of your line of fire. One time enemy just rolled from the map and was impossible to reach. Annoyingly, it was a part where I had to kill all enemies in an arena. This forces me to restart game to a previous check point.
Glitchy camera - Camera in this game is not a best and constantly can glitch through objects.
Poor Autolock - Autolock in this game is quite terrible. It fails dealing properly with elevations. This makes firing enemies below or above you annoying. Especially since later on in a game there are plenty bullet spongy, fast enemy flyers.
Poor Jumpads - How do you mess something like this up? This game has jumpads which fail to elevate you and you end up jumping up and down.
Interuptive Cutscenes - Throughout the campaign you will constantly be interrupted with cutscenes. You will be in a firefight one moment and the next everything will stop for game to show you what has changed.
End of the Hill
In the end there is no real reason why you should play this game today. It is a dead game with nothing to show for outside of its multiplayer. Its single player aspect is exceedingly mediocre. There is nothing interesting in it and while game can potentially be fun with upwards of three players, you could say that to any game. It was a good trip to the past, getting to know a game which I always regretted not playing more during its prime.