In short, the music grates and the effects delight. I was very impressed with all the little noises and nuances presented here, and the sound effects and voice acting never failed to bring a smile to my face. The dragons roar, the princesses cry out, castle crumble, wind blows with realistic wooshing noises and lighting crackles like the real thing. There are only two tracks, one for each episode theme and they will get on your nerves quickly, especially if you just outright suck at a particular level and the music begins to feel like an evil taunt ala the dog in Duck Hunt. I’m not really a fan of the music in this game. The only new sounds are witches cackling and wolves howling so again, let’s take a bit from the original review:
#GREED CORP PS3 PC#
If you’ve ever seen the PC versions of Magic Ball, this new PS3 game blows them away. As the game shifts from day into night it is quite impressive to see the use of colour, shading, and the texturing of the game. Quite possibly the best visuals in the game comes when you collect the night power up. I was impressed by aspects like wind, lighting, various explosions and more. The character models of the knights, princesses and so on are about PSX level quality, but then they are bricks and there’s so much on the screen, this isn’t too much of a surprise. Obviously Magic Ball is not going to go head to head with the visuals of say, Metal Gear Solid 4, but this is one of the best looking games I’ve downloaded from the PS3 store yet. Instead of breaking bricks, you’re breaking castles, crossbows, trees, fields, pirate ships, giant sharks, dragons and more. Unlike other brick breaking puzzles which are generally quite sterile or bland, Magic Ball comes close to completely reinventing the genre. Nothing has really changed here save the addition of witches, wolves, lambs and chickens to breakable bricks, so let’s take a snippet from my original piece. It’s not bad for the cost, and the new levels are useable in multiplayer – if you both purchased the DLC. The extra trophies are a nice touch for those that care about them, although in such a fast paced game it’s a bit annoying to have the upper right corner of your screen displaying a trophy for several seconds when you’re trying to keep your eye on your ball.įor three bucks, we’re basically getting a variant/rehash of the knights levels and some new trophies to earn. The game also comes with a few new trophies, some of which are easy to obtain (like a silver for taking out a witch at night) while others are totally insane (Such as beating fifty levels in a row without stopping. In this respect, Wicked Witches felt a bit redundant and there was a bit of déjàvu beating this. This was a bit disappointing as I was hoping for something a bit different from the original two themes, like aliens or ninjas. In fact, the levels have more in common with the original set of Knight themed levels, and in truth some of them actually feel like I’ve played them before.
How does it hold up?Īlthough the theme of the package is “Wicked Witches,” only a fraction of the levels actually have witches or anything witched themed in theme. As I enjoyed the original game, I decided to invest in the DLC. Wicked Witches adds another 24 levels to Magic Ball, which is essentially 50% more content for an additional $2.99. Almost three months to the day after the original release of Magic Ball, we’ve got our first bit of downloadable content.