Madballs

The Good
I'm writing this after about three hours of playing the game. I haven't got very far but I'll be back again tomorrow to try again.

This game is different and that counts for a lot.

There's some daft back story about an alien parliament and trying to get other balls on your side by knocking them down holes and off the grid. Well before I played this game I read that, and the instructions and forgot everything within 3 seconds of playing the game. The only thing I remembered is that some piece of documentation said 'Oh by the way, the other Madballs are to get you'. 'Boy!' is that an understatement. There's no time to explore the play area, no time to acclimatise, these things are on you as soon as you start to move. They come in ones and in two's and probably later in the game they'll hunt in packs, but I never survived that long. They hound you off the game board ruthlessly so be prepared to die a lot, very quickly and very often until you master the controls and have an effective strategy for dealing with them.

So what's good about that? Well the pleasure, the feeling of sheer triumph, when you do get one of them makes up for dozens of deaths.

I did all my moving around via cursor keys and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could go diagonally to avoid my pursuers.

I thought I'd play it for 10 - 15 minutes and here I am an a couple of hours later still trying to crack it. I still really don't know what I'm supposed to do in the game and that's after reading the instructions and the reviews and playing it, but it's different enough to make me want to keep playing.

Oddly enough I think if this game was re-made today with music, sound effects, modern graphics and realistic physics it just wouldn't be the same.

The Bad
I'd have liked an easier start to the game. (Although there's that nagging feeling that this was an easy start and I'm just to old & slow to play it)

The Bottom Line
Wacky and zany are terms I rarely use but they were made for this game.

It's also a little gem and a breath of fresh air.