When mods become full titles…..
OK, before we start, just to be clear – I absolutely point-blank refuse to make any of the obvious “Ball” related jokes, OK? I’m too old, I don’t find them funny, and you can probably read this entire review and snigger to yourself without any assistance from me. Glad we got that out of the way.
Bloody kids. Right.
The Ball is a first-person action game from newly formed Teotl Studios, who were encouraged into the project after the success of their award winning UT3 mod, also cunningly titled “The Ball”. Gaining second place in the “Make Something Unreal” competition (losing out to “The Haunting”, a horror mod), Teotl quickly established themselves using a grant from the Nordic Gaming Program, and The Ball is their first full-feature title, expanding on their mod beginnings.
The Ball is a classic first-person adventure with a twist – you play an archaeologist who unwittingly stumbles upon an ancient underground world, lost for centuries, populated by lost tribes of undead creatures. Whilst trying to escape, you quickly find a giant metal ball (see what they did there?), and the device by which you can control it. Good thing you do, too, as the ball is needed to solve many of the traps and puzzles laid out before you as you work and fight your way to freedom and away from the underground nightmare.
Essentially this means you can push and pull the ball around, dropping it into holes and using it as a makeshift platform, like a basic Half-Life gravity gun with only one projectile. You can also use this against the many enemies you encounter too, although often this means lining up the mummy/gorilla/demon etc. between you and the ball and then pulling it towards you. The ball itself isn’t really the best weapon I have encountered in an action title, and there are no alternative weapons, but thankfully combat is only a small part of the game. Also, some of the later creatures require a combination of the ball and the environment to defeat, adding a bit of thought to what otherwise quickly becomes a banal combat routine.
The Ball is all about the puzzles and exploration. You soon find a variety of ways in which the ball can help you climb, drop, pass through doors and generally get about the place, although you quickly realise one major problem – the tedium of dragging the damn thing around with you. Large sections of the game seem to function as long passages through which you push and pull the ball along, waiting to find the next section of activity. I couldn’t help but wish some kind of teleport system could move it about for you, thereby saving some of the laborious work between rooms.
But that’s not to say that the game itself is uninteresting – far from it. Teotl have done a great job of pushing their design team to the limit, and the wonderfully rendered caverns and caves are populated with intricate and fascinating temples, walkways and easily identifiable zones and areas. The Unreal engine is nicely utilised too – plenty of colour and detail fills each level, with clever character design (apart from the occasional “Epic” rip off…) and fluid animation adding well to the atmosphere. The sound works too – from your ball making a heavy grinding noise as it rolls, to the subtle music playing in the background, it all builds a credible game world.
The shame is, with all this lovely design and work, The Ball doesn’t really do anything until right near the end. Puzzles start out simple and don’t really progress until the final acts. After the insane highs of titles such as Portal (sorry, but I had to say it), The Ball fails to actually keep the gamer thinking for the bulk of its six hour game time. Each zone becomes a simple rehash of “kill the creatures, roll over a couple of buttons and climb to the exit”. Rinse, rehash, repeat. Modern gamers (particularly PC gamers) expect more than this nowadays, and unfortunately leaves The Ball feeling more like an inspired tech demo than a fully fledged title. Luckily, if you do stick with it then the final few zones up the ante with some clever ideas that expand the balls range of skills, including a particularly cool gravity mode that makes stuff (including you!) fly away from the ball itself.
The lack of narrative doesn’t help either – aside from a brief intro and the odd short cutscene, little is done to advance the story from “this guy wants to get out, right, and needs to use a ball to do it”. It cries out for a defined protagonist, or a fleshed out back story. The few bits of info found in hidden areas only really brush upon what could have been a good history and motive for the enemies in the game. Another missed opportunity that would have helped bring the game up to a very high standard indeed.
Overall, The Ball is a good, if simplified title that seems to run out of steam just short of being a classic. The stock gameplay is fun, and when played in short bursts you can really appreciate the nuances. However, the short playtime and lack of replay factors means it is all over a little too quickly, and the lack of any kind of multiplayer or expansions don’t really make you want to come back for more The basic mechanic works, although does get repetitive, but the level design and later puzzles do at least ensure most gamers will see the quest to the end. An interesting, if flawed, start for Teotl then, but I will be watching for their next title with keen interest.
The Bad: Quite short, with little replay value; takes too long to get really good; lack of narrative and story; combat sucks hard; still feels like a user made mod as opposed to a fully developed title.