By Steve Beyer:
I just have to come clean because I have been playing a bit of hooky this week. My Son is home on leave from the Army before he ships off oversees in late September. He is also a Mac lover so we have been spending way too much time discussing and playing with Mac Software. He brought his new unibody 17” MacBook Pro with a Solid State Drive. It a thing of beauty to behold and it created quite a bit of lust on my side.
After dealing with the all those numbers from my last Review, “Accounted” by Oranged Software, I have to admit that some game playing was defiantly in order and thus my review for this week an iPhone game called GloBall. Globall is developed by Robot Super Brain. They can be found at www.robotsuperbrain.com. No information was available about the developers but they seem to specialize in game development. In addition to GloBall they currently have another iphone game called Sly-Q and god forbid a windows series called Tropix.
Robot Super Brain describes GloBall as simple and addictive. Tilt to roll the ball and break blocks! Avoid or squish your enemies, and conquer the globe! As your score increases, so does your sphere of influence on the GloBall globe. Can you become the best player in your neighborhood, your city, or even the world?
Globall seems to be a hybrid of brick breaker and a maze game. The paid version of the game currently has 70 different levels with each getting progressively harder and more challenging. The goal is to hit all of the colored blocks and bonus squares with your rolling globall all the while trying to avoid obstacles along the way. You gain bonus points by completing each of level before the allotted time runs out. At the beginning of each level, You are given three lives to complete the maze. If you run into one of the obstacles you can lose one of these lives. You can gain more lives by collecting magnetic gold coins along your journey.
Globall uses iPhones built in accelerometer to control the movements of your globall through the maze. I normally am not that great at using tilt movements but I took to this setup instantly. Tilt makes the game much easier to control than standard buttons. I found that I was able to get better control by working on a table. I place two thumbs and two fingers on the four corners of the iphone each lightly resting on the table. This allowed me to obtain much finer moments and control
What really Sets this game apart from the others that I have tried is the additional use of location in the gameplay. Globall uses the iphone’s GPS which allows it to blow away the traditional leader board found in most games. Not only can you see the current rankings but you also find out where in the world the current leader resides and the area that your score dominates Globall tells you the feet or miles to next highest score for game totals and for each level .
This really add to the excitement of the game. It is fun to watch your rank grow and globall area of influence increase. Globall is a gorgeous game to behold. Its has real splashy colors and animation. It starts with a short video of the Robot Super Brain logo and then quickly moves to a menu with three menu items.
Play
Levels
Options
Levels presents you with a thumb nail of either a map or lock for each of the 70 levels. You can move through each level using a cover-flow style interface. Each level displays your current rank and number of miles of dominance. Clicking on a thumbnail moves you to the start of it’s corresponding level.
Back at the main menu, The options item provides the user with four more menu items.
Viewed Saved Score
Reset game,
Help, and Calibrate Tilt.
There are also two check boxes for Sound and Post Scores to Globe.
The Play Menu item returns you back to your last point in the game and provides the normal one level after another progression. Touching the screen pauses the game. You can quickly reenter the game where you left off. This allows you to pick it up when time permits. That is assuming you have more will power than me.
The Globall ricochets off each of the blocks in much the same manner as most brick breaking games. If you hit a power up block you gain special powers for a limited time. These power-up options are Fire Ball, Ice Ball, Bomb Ball, Lightning Ball, and Nuclear Ball. Each provides a different awesome super power that help you make it through the game faster and removes the normal ricocheting.
Each level contains one or more obstacles that can cause death and require you to restart at the beginning of the level. If you lose all of your lives you have to replay the level. Some of the obstacles can be destroyed for bonus points. The obstacles include spike balls that grow as you approach, Worms that eat your ball and require you to shake to escape, Dragons that bounce across your path, Money Bugs that contain extra gold coins but can also quickly become a deadly circular saw, Fire Walls that turn on and off to bar your progress and Deadly Lava fields that kill instantly on contact or cause you globall to smoke if you get too close.
This game has a lot of action. Secret Doors open when you roll by.
Gates open when you turn a wheel. Teleport Tubes move you quickly from one room to another. Something is always going on and the action really draws you into the game.
The Light version of the game is a fully operational trial version but it is limited to 7 levels. The paid version currently has 70 levels with more levels included with each update. These levels are more challenging and provide more opportunity for higher scores and Globall world domination. The paid version of the game is currently priced at $2.99 which is a bit higher than many games. I think it is worth the entrance fee. I love the game play and the location features.
This is currently my favorite game. I love the bright colors, the fast action, and the different challenges. I am still having a hard time negotiating the lava fields. I have a long way to go in order dominate the world but I have been able to move above 400th place. The location based Scoreboard is a feature I would love to see in more games. I would highly recommend that you give the light version a try and then decide for yourself if it is worth the $2.99 price.
If you have a favorite game that you would like to share, I can be reached by email at threetwo@me.com or via twitter at threetwo. I plan on getting back to work on the Studiometry review. No More game time honest…. Well, maybe just a little more Globall. I really want to get above 300th place.
Tags: games, Globall, iphone, iPod, robotsuperbrain
I was enjoying this game myself. My wife also downloaded it and we quickly realized that the location feature for ranking high scores for yourself and others nearby are, how shall I say this, fiction. We played many games in the same level raising scores all the way, but the rankings for each individual player were never even close, often off by thousands. Also the distance over which you had the highest score varied often, sometimes 50 miles or more on one Iphone with a lower score than the other Iphone that might display only a 5 mile radius.
After a while I lost interest in the game as the only part of the scoring you can trust is playing against yourself.