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| | Publisher: PopCap Games  Genre: Arcade | | Mac OS X: 10.2.8 Mac OS Classic: Not Supported
CPU: G3 RAM: 128 MB Hard Disk: 10 MB 2x CD-ROM Graphics: 640x480 @ 32-bit, 16 MB VRAM |
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When I was a kid at school, at the height of the original Rubik's Cube craze, one of my friends had an unusual puzzle. It was shaped like interlocking links in a chain, and was filled with colored plastic balls which moved around through channels. You were supposed to sort the balls into groups of colors, but the way the channels interlocked made the puzzle hugely difficult and frustrating. It was really annoying, and I hated it.When I first saw screenshots of Zuma Deluxe, it brought back bad memories of that detestable plastic puzzle. I saw the pictures, read that Zuma was a "puzzle game," and groaned: surely that old puzzle couldn't have come back to haunt me again! So I wasn't inspired to pay much attention to Zuma until I was asked to review it, and when that happened, I only agreed to write the article after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I installed the game expecting the worst, but what I actually got was a very pleasant surprise. As it turns out, Zuma bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the hated puzzle from my youth. So, if anyone else was put off Zuma for similar reasons, fret not! In fact, Zuma barely falls into the category of "puzzle game" at all. It's much more of a fast-action arcade-style game with a good deal of strategy and skill thrown into the mix. It's sufficiently simple that there's virtually no learning involved, yet it's complex enough to be interesting and compelling. It's the kind of game you can pick up and play right away, and should be equally appealing to all ages.Gameplay: A load of balls Stop smirking you in the back. There may not be any brass monkeys in this game, but there are certainly lots of balls, not to mention a stone frog. Don't ask me why you take the part of a stone frog; such details are never adequately explained. Nor is the question of why the lost temples of the Zuma tribe should be filled with intricate channels that have carved and brightly-colored balls rolling around them, or why your stone frog should die if a ball falls down a hole. This is a classic case of "ignore the story and play the game." Before all this talk of stone frogs and lost temples gets too confusing, though, let's just look at what you have to do.You're a stone frog. Just accept it. (If you need counseling sessions, fine, but they'll have to be at your own expense.) Not only that, but you're a stone frog that can regurgitate a limitless supply of colorful stone balls and spit them out with great speed and accuracy. So that's what you must do. Your frog will be somewhere on the screen, surrounded by a snaking channel which leads to a sort of plug-hole with a skull-plate covering it, and colorful balls will enter the channel from an entry-point, or sometimes two entry-points, at the edge of the screen. The balls roll gradually along the channel towards the plug-hole and, as they get close, the skull opens its mouth in readiness to swallow the approaching balls. Before that happens, you need to clobber all the balls. Let just one fall into the skull's maw and you'll lose a life. Moving the mouse causes the frog to pirouette on its plinth at dizzying speed, and a click will spit a ball in the direction of the pointer. Now, the tricky part is that in order to remove balls from the channel, you must fire your frog's ball into at least two more of the same color. Match up three or more balls of the same color, and they'll vanish and a gap will appear. That'll give you a bit of breathing-space, because there will be a brief delay, as the gap closes, before the balls in front of the gap start being pushed again towards the plug-hole. However, like-colored balls are attracted towards each other, so if you open up a gap, and the balls on either side are the same color, the ones after the gap will roll backwards. And if that results in three or more of the same color meeting together, they too will pop and vanish. Very handy: if you're skillful and lucky, you can set up multiple chain-reactions like this. Sometimes the ball-channel will double-back on itself several times, and if you can fire balls through gaps in the chain, removing groups of balls from beyond the nearest channel, you can score big bonuses. You can also score lots of points for shooting coins that appear periodically, or for removing several groups of balls consecutively. Score enough points and a progress bar will eventually fill up, at which point there will be a cry of "Zuma!", the balls will retreat a short distance back along the channel, and no more new balls will enter the screen. You still have to clobber all the balls that remain on the screen before any fall into the hole, but at least there are no more new ones coming in.
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