Zuma Review (360, XBLA)

Frog Vs Manic Lottery Machine – Who will survive?

It’s hard to describe or even hear about the concept of Zuma without raising an eyebrow. Quite right too…

For those not familiar with the concept of Zuma, you play as a stone frog that has been given the unique ability to fire coloured balls. Whilst travelling through several temples, you are threatened by long trails of coloured balls that will surround you, circling you at a constant speed until they fall down a hole and you die. The only way to stop the coloured balls is by firing more coloured balls at them, attempting to match 3 of the same colour, thereby destroying them.

Yes, say what you want about the format of it all, but the firing coloured balls concept has become very popular on the internet, sparking off many imitators… without the frog.

So, with this increase in popularity, Popcap Games have flogged Zuma onto the Xbox Live Arcade… and we’ve already hit a problem. One which the developers probably won’t like me raising: Zuma has been online and playable to anyone for free for quite some time now. So Popcap will really have to throw in some brilliant enhancements if they want you to part with your hard earned cash.

Well, the graphics aren’t incredibly impressive. In fact, if you quickly glance at the screen you’d be forgiven for thinking that absolutely nothing has changed. The only real improvement they’ve made is adding a nice ‘rolling’ effect to the coloured balls to make them look 3D and more convincing in movement… and that’s it. If you’re impressed by that then you must be a huge Zuma enthusiast, or are really interested in ball dynamics…

At least the graphics have improved slightly, though. Gameplay has actually managed to get worse. You can use the control stick to aim and shoot, yet the frog moves around so fast and jitters so much when you try and keep it still that you constantly end up firing in all the wrong places, screwing up your plans for victory.

I can’t really comment on the soundtrack seeing as after 5 minutes of listening to it I had to throw on the Xbox music player quickly. The game consists of one pretty annoying piece of music trying to convey some sort of Aztec atmosphere but just sounds like an entire Rugby team being run over by a bus, followed by the bus backing up and repeating the process. I’m sure there’s a second piece of music in here somewhere, yet they all sound incredibly similar and I’m sure you’ve got the point.

Of course, it’s not all negatives. Zuma is one of those rare puzzle games that challenges both the intelligence and hand eye co-ordination and is easy to pick up and play… when the control scheme wants to work for once.

In addition to the standard mode, there is the ‘Gauntlet’, a basic survival mode where you pick a level and see how long you can last against an endless stream of balls. If you laughed at that rather immature sentence, then that is the only moment of joy you’ll ever get from the ‘Gauntlet’.

This is for die-hard Zuma fans; everyone else should just play it for free online.

At the best of times, Zuma is a fairly enjoyable, yet hollow experience that’ll sometimes infuriate you. Compared to versions available online, this feels very rushed and definitely needed polishing before it was released for purchase, especially when it comes to desperate ideas for achievements (i.e. Play the game for 24 hours). This is for die-hard Zuma fans; everyone else should just play it for free online.