Marble Blast Ultra

You don't have to buy expensive retail games to have fun with the Xbox 360.

Back in 2003, Garage Games decided to go it alone for the PC. Instead of paying a distributor to sell their games at retail, they decided to sell their games online. One of the first games that they released was called Marble Blast. The single player game was solid and did a nice job of combining racing, puzzles and 3D technology into a package that really shined at budget price. It was a pretty popular game for the market it served.

Flash forward to 2006 and the games being released in disc form for the Xbox 360 is a very slow trickle. In the meantime, what does someone do to justify the spending £280 for a console? Check out Xbox Live Arcade, of course! One of the recent additions to the Live Arcade library is Marble Blast Ultra. The game sells for 800 points , and brings the 2003 PC game to a whole new audience with some new features.

The premise of the game is simple. Get your marble from point A to point B in the fastest time possible. Of course, rolling the marble in a straight line is very easy, so there are a plethora of levels to make sure the game is worth your while.

Of course, the first level is very simple. As you continue on, you’ll have to complete some tasks in order to finish the level, such as obtain gems. In addition there will be power ups which you’ll be required to get if you want to finish. These power ups include a rocket power up so you’ll move faster, a spring which allows you to perform a super jump, a helicopter power up which makes your marble airborne, and a ‘time travel’ power up which will stop the clock for 5 seconds per powerup. If you’re looking to beat a time, make sure you pick all of these up!

Graphically, the game isn’t bad. You can get a sense of how fast your marble is rolling just by looking at it spin. The texture of the marble is impressive. You can change your marble’s appearance to 35 different styles, including a football looking marble, a happy face marble and a pool ball marble. The game uses the "Torque" engine which PC fans may know from Sierra’s Tribes game. Yes, it is ancient by gamer time, but it still looks clean and the 3D mazes that your marble is in really look good.

The music is ok. It’s a techno soundtrack that neither adds nor subtracts from the actual gameplay. Custom soundtracks would have been nice, but you can work with what you’ve got here.

As mentioned before, gameplay is simple. Move your marble around using the left thumbstick. The laws of physics do apply here, so you can’t turn left on a whim – you have to slow your marble momentum down in order to make a turn. The A button serves as a jump button so you can overcome minor bumps in the maze (you’ll need the superjump power up in order to jump to higher platform levels). You also have a blast meter which fills up over time (or you can get the Ultra Blast powerup) which gives you a slight extra jump, but is very handy for multiplayer games (more on that later).

In single player mode, there are 60 mazes to beat. Your goal is to have the fastest time possible. By beating the "par" time on each level, you’ll be awarded an Xbox Live Achievement. The 60 mazes are split into three difficulty levels – beginner, intermediate and advanced. The first 10 or so mazes on beginner will make you think this game is a pushover, but then as you progress, even in beginner mode, you may be able to finish the maze, but you’ll have to keep trying again and again in order to beat the par time.

Par Time isn’t the only thing to play against – through the leaderboard option, you can see where you rate in the world versus everyone who has played the game, or you can also whittle that down to just your friends that have played the game. For example, on the intermediate level, there’s a maze called "Moving Up." To win it, you have to…uhh..move up. Right now my best time is 18.54, good enough for 10,597th place. One of my friends however, has a time of 3.79 seconds. I have no idea how he could have done this in 3.79 seconds…maybe using the time powerup…but now I have something extra to aim for. Don’t underestimate the power of the friends leaderboard – it is very addictive to try to beat your friend’s time!

In addition to the single player, there’s also multiplayer over Xbox Live. The multiplayer isn’t bad, but I have spent more time in single player trying to beat my friend’s scores than the multiplayer.

Multiplayer usually involves being the marble with the most gems instead of racing for the best time. The gems magically appear in a maze and some gems are worth more gem points than others. When time is up, the marble with the most gem points wins. As mentioned before, you can use the Marble blast mode by hitting the left bumper button. This will bump your opponents off the map if you do it correctly, but you are limited to using it based on how full your meter is. It’s a neat little feature but I still prefer single player to multiplayer.

Marble Blast Ultra is yet another game in a surprisingly good run of Xbox Live Arcade games. For the 800 point cost, you get a very fun game that is great in little spurts when you don’t have time for a 30 minute gaming session. Be careful though, rolling the marble is so addictive that 30 minutes will go by before you know it!

This review courtesy of our friends at Gameshark .