Ball 7 review
Introduction and Installation:
This received a positive 90% of 201 votes when it was given away in July 07 as well as a fairly good reception in the comments section although the installer didn’t install any shortcuts which some felt was a little annoying; thankfully it’s easy enough to create your own short cuts. See the link below for details on how to accomplish this:
Creating a shortcut:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2594?replies=3
Previous Comments:
http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/ball-7/#comments
Once installed the game takes up approximately 100Mb of which over 80Mbs are textures and animations.
The Game
A small window always opens on starting the game that allows you to change your screen resolution, (though there are actually only four settings from 640x480 to 1280x1024). Once this is done you are taken to the main menu, where you have the choice of starting a new game or if you’ve already played, resuming where you left off. For new players, setting up your profile can be a bit of a bind as the game has chosen to use that antiquated method of inputting your name one letter at a time from a grid of letters. Assuming you are a returning player; you can select any previous level that you’ve played if you wish. Also when you’ve lost all your lives, you are given the opportunity of restarting the level again, but with only one life. This is not always a bad thing as the first time it happened to me I seemed to be really lucky and picked up three lives within a short space of time. There are two game modes to play, arcade and realistic, the difference between then is in the way the ball reacts in game. That is in the arcade mode the ball does not obey Newton’s Laws of Motion, whereas with the realistic mode the ball will always bounce in the opposite direction from which it came. (Obeying the equal and opposite force Law) The arcade mode allows much more control over the balls movement. Regardless of which mode you choose though, the ball physics are exceptionally good in this game, and I’d go as far as to say they are the best I’ve seen here on the game giveaway project in any arkanoid given away. Also depending upon what the ball hits, very fast ball speeds can be attained which makes it very difficult to keep in play, especially if you have more than one bat in play. In some levels there are moving obstacles that are indestructible, and add to the overall difficulty of the game as they add even more uncertainty to the game play. You’ll find up to four bats in play in the later levels, much like in the arkanoid game called Quadronoid that I mention below in the notes
The information page, that’s found in the main menu, details all the power ups which you can collect, the most useful ones being the gun and the life bonuses (IMO). There are plenty of life bonuses, which is a good thing as you’re going to need them. You can see the power ups by following the links to the images below. The game is paused using the traditional P key and there’s even a boss key.
The options menu allows you to change the volume of the music and sound effect, but there is no other parameter to adjust, for example there’s no windowed mode unfortunately.
Images
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Ball%207/
Slideshow Images
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Ball%207/?albumview=slideshow
Conclusion
Even if you’ve got several arkanoids this is a must have. Despite its uninspiring power ups, (generally) there are some unusual surprises in this game. The slick looking level design that change from level to level; one minute your shooting balls upwards from the traditional 2D position, then you’re shooting them from a sideways viewpoint, with a bat at each end., Sometimes these are reversed, so that you have two bats, one at the top and bottom, or just one bat from the side, (like in Z-ball) and as mentioned above in later levels you’re going to come across even more bats. :lol: About the only unusual power up is the light switch which when turned off, the only light source you’ll see is coming from the ball. However the best bit is the excellent ball physics. Which are unsurpassed when comparing this game with most other arkanoids I know. Though I do think the ball physics for the freeware game Poing is just as good, and maybe even another freeware arkanoid called Beat Ball which you can download from the freeware section of the game giveaway project. (You can see a review of Poing in the game discussion forums – see link below) Today’s giveaway is a very challenging game that has lots of re-playability in my opinion. I’ve had it for nearly two years and still haven’t finished it yet.
I give this particular Arkanoid game 8 out of 10 for riveting game play as well as re-playability (for those who have noted my scoring previously this is one of the higher scores I reserve for games that I’ve either bought already, or will do when I have to; okay I’m a little biased here because arkanoids happen to be one of my favorite genres, but this really is an exceptional version of that classic genre. There are games that I’d score higher for though, for example, Switch Ball a fantastic marble maneuvering game and the recently given away Infinite Jigsaw Puzzle and even Magic Farm though I scored that a seven initially.
notes
The idea of using more than one bat isn’t new though as we all know that the first ever arcade game used two bats, though not with such beautiful graphics. Also there are at least three games to my knowledge that use more than one bat. For example Quadronoid got there before Ball 7, and went one further with the ability to select from one, two, three or four bats; but in my opinion, Ball 7 is probably the best of the multi bat games. Quadronoid does have a levels editor, but the overall game play doesn’t just come up to the game play of today’s offering. You can check the demo out at:
http://www.tomdownload.com/games/arcade/quadronoid.htm
There’s also Little Gods a beautifully rendered gothic styled breakout/pong clone and a faster paced but no less gorgeous game called Rival ball Tournament. Both combine pong with different styles of breakout and both as well as Ball 7 should be found in all casual gamers library of games.
Little Gods: The first link is to a review
http://www.gametunnel.com/gamespace.php?id=239&tab=3
http://www.sofotex.com/Little-Gods-download_L33000.html
RivalBall Tournament:
http://www.gametunnel.com/gamespace.php?id=164
Check out the following link that has a growing number of freeware (and commercial) arkanoids and breakouts listed:
Arkanoids and Breakouts: A list of decent freeware (and not so free):
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2607?replies=57
and for the review and download link for Poing:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2525?replies=14
If you wish to change the music that’s located in the games folder you will need an audio converter to first convert your mp3 and WAV files to the ogg format. Once that’s been done, you then have to rename the files you’re using with the ones that are being replaced. You can download a suitable audio converter from the freeware library to do that. There’s nothing like having your favorite music playing when playing an arcade game :)
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freeware/2007/08/30/free-mp3-wma-converter/
or
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freeware/2007/07/30/free-mp3-wma-wav-converter/
Thank you Merscom LLC and the Game Giveaway team for repeating this superb brick busting game.