Life as a cloud producing Zwooph can be hard work. So when the weekend comes, its party time!
You are Hoshi, an afore mentioned Zwooph. You have a long nose and are blue and fluffy! From your nose you produce large puffs of air ? and clouds. So what does one do to relax when you are a ball of air pushing fluff? Well according to Bliss Island, loads!
Bliss Island is essentially a collection of mini games. They feel a bit like those flash games that get sent round the office, but more on that later. These mini games are held together with a thread thin storyline about Zwooph competitions to show off their skills.
There are 9 main games, all working off the same basic concepts. Pushing stuff around with your puffs of air, or pushing yourself around with puffs of air. Each game has to be unlocked in the ?Adventure Mode?. This takes you through each of the games one after the other, giving you 3 attempts or ?strikes? to complete each one. Before each game you get some very bizarre description of what the challenge is and just why Hoshi enjoys it! Each game has 6 levels to play to then open it up in the Challenge mode.
Each game is very easy to pick up, even with the dodgy descriptions.
They all work by pointing in a direction with the analogue nub and pressing X to blow. Some require you to blow repeatedly whilst watching out for running out of air where others just get you to point and push and hope it was right!
I won’t describe each one here, but will pick out ones that stood out to me.
First of all, my favourite is Billiards. You have to push the white ball into the yellow and red ones, to make same colours touch. Each time you miss you lose a strike. The physics work very nicely in this instance and I will admit it still has me coming back every now and then in challenge mode, for one more go!
Next on my list of good eggs is a kind of sideways scrolling Thrust alike. Using your air pushing powers, you have to push your self along the level collecting diamonds, all the time being chased by a Zwooph grinder. Again the physics are wonderful, and there is a real sense of imminent death?sorry strikes!
To be honest though, they are the only ones that stood out to me! The rest seemed a bit flimsy. All nice and fun, but lacking any kind of depth. Some can be very frustrating, in the bad way. Throwing fruit into the mouth of a monster, whilst crabs block your way was just plain annoying!
The games are well presented, but nothing special. The characters are varied and cute and the effects and backgrounds are well drawn. The trouble is they all have a flash game feel to them, not really something that shows off the PSP!
Coming to a conclusion about this game is very difficult. If I were a 6 year old, I would probably find the immediacy of the game very enjoyable. Even as a parent (which I am not until April), I imagine it would be a good game to get a child, as there is no violence and it looks and sounds cute.
But as I am neither of those, I have to say I would not buy this game. I would find a site that did free flash games and play them!
It is a budget game and looks and feels just like that. But on a PSP for �20 I would expect more.
If you have a child and you see it in bargain bin, then get it for them and they will probably love it.
For me it does nothing wrong and I am not offended by it.
The lack of a game sharing mode really makes the multiplayer games a bit pointless, but that is neither here nor there.
There were a few bits that now I have the game, I will go back and play from time to time, but my advice would be to rent it from Blockbusters and see what you think!
The Bad: No depth
