Mad ‘O’ Ball 3D for iPhone: Ball tilting madness may drive you crazy!

Mad O Ball 3D_4

Mad ‘O’ Ball 3D Rating: ★★★½☆

Remember Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball? Yes, well Mad ‘O’ Ball 3D is similar to both those titles all be it without the free roaming nature of Marble Madness or the monkey driven craziness of Super Monkey Ball. Instead Mad ‘O’ Ball 3D requires you to tilt and roll your ball around a 3D roller coaster of tubes and shoots.

You race against the clock in Mad ‘O’ Ball 3D around 32 courses split between 4 unique worlds each with their own beautiful 3D graphics. There’s a lot of variety between the 4 worlds and 32 tracks which keeps things interesting as you progress through the four worlds.

To begin with only the Tutorial and East worlds are open to you and you’ll need to complete each world before you are able to move onto the next. The tutorial, as you would expect, takes you through the basics and gets you ready for the more difficult challenges ahead. Before you start the game you’ll need to calibrate your device on a flat surface so that the tilt controls via the accelerometer are accurate and effective.

Unfortunately it appears that the game can only currently be played by holding the device flat and that limits your options especially if you want to play the game lying down or even standing up. I tried to calibrate the device for these different positions but the game didn’t respond as well as the game does when playing it flat.

Before you start each level the camera zooms around the environment giving you a 360 degree perspective and this can be very helpful as while you are actually playing the game in the top-down view you only get to see a small area in fornt of you so your reactions need to be quick to be ready for the changes in direction, jumps and steep slopes to name just a few of the obstacles that you will come up against.

Mad O Ball 3D

Because of the lack of visibility symbols appear on screen warning you of the next obstacle you are about to face and anticipation of these obstacles is key to survival in this game as I found it pretty unforgiving. Go slightly too fast, jump ever slightly late or tilt in the wrong angle and you’ll soon find yourself careering over the edge of the pipe and it’ll be game over. Luckily there are check points along the route so you won’t always have to start all over again every time.

While the game is for a single player only there is OpenFeint integration with 30+ achievements in addition to the online leader boards for you to climb. Unfortunately the achievements are all based on completing the levels where as it would have been nice to have some random achievements thrown in such as fallen off 20 times or reached 20mph for example.

While it’s easy to pick up and play the game with it’s simple tilt controls the frustrating nature of ease in which you can fall off the tracks will put some people off and at $4 it’s by no means a cheap game, thankfully there is a free version of the app available for people to try things out first before forking out the full amount. If you like this genre then you will probably like this game too, for others, it may be just a little too frustratingly difficult.

The Good

  • OpenFeint Integration with 30+ Achievements
  • 32 unique tracks

The Not So Good

  • Can only play the game with a flat device
  • Unforgivingly difficulty

Price: $3.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Updated: Mar 18, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0.1
Size: 41.3 MB
Language: English
Seller: Tommaso Lintrami
© Tommaso Lintrami
Rated 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

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