Madballs in…Babo: Invasion Review

What do you get when you mix Marble Madness, Smash T.V and Super Monkey Ball and throw them all into a blender? You get the concoction that is Madballs in…Babo: Invasion. It’s a strange mixture of hectic combat, platforming elements and rolling around that somehow ends up working well together. I’ll be frank; when we got our hands on a copy of this game over at Gamepex, I was a bit skeptical. The time I spent downloading the game from Steam was used to glance at videos and pictures of the gameplay, my brain unable to grasp how the game actually would feel like to play. I mean, you spend the game rolling around as a bunch of different eyeballs!

Single player starts up with the usual tutorial which is called “Boot Camp”. This introduces you to how weapons function, moving your character and all the basics of the game. It’s a fairly standard affair. Your weapons come with two modes of fire, usually one more effective against certain enemy types than the other. There are numerous types of weapons in the game ranging from a standard assault rifle-type to rocket launchers and guns that shoot metal blades. Each of the numerous characters fits a certain archetype such as heavy, support, flyers and the like with out own unique special abilities. Despite the amount of guns available to me in the game, I spent much of my time sticking to one or two that I particularly liked playing with as the balancing of the weapons isn’t exactly perfect.

Once you finish up Boot Camp, you hop into the story. As the story progresses, your treated to hand drawn background moving across the screen with text detailing the story. It’s not particularly deep nor engaging, but the writing can be funny at times. Either way, your probably not playing Madballs because you want a deep and engaging plot, your playing it because you want to blow stuff up, which the game prefers admirably in. Combat is quick and fun – while not exactly difficult in the beginning, the number and type of enemies that show up later in the game lend to some strategy or you’ll be restarting at the previous checkpoint rather often. The 3D isometric view that the game sticks you in can make it difficult to view some of the enemies higher on your screen, causing you to end up firing blindly into corners, but a switch to the 2D camera makes it a bit better.

The audio in the game is decent, about what you would expect from a game at this price point. For the most part I was able to generally ignore the background music and audio although there are a few tunes that are genuinely catchy in a Quake 3 sort of fashion. Your Madballs will occasionally spout a few one liners but they are nothing to write home about. You wouldn’t miss anything from lowering the sound or turning it off completely, as the cutscene don’t feature any voiceovers.

The major problem with the game is level design. There is no jump button despite the fact that the game really feels like it should have one. The platforming elements are completely mostly by using little boosting circles that shoot you into the air and launch you to a upper portion of the level. The problem with this is that while gamers who are familiar with the WASD concept should have no problems moving around for most of the game, the lack of the ability to fine tune your movements send you careening into the sides of a narrow walkway only to fall to the ground and have to walk the section all over again. When your stuck on a level – not because of the amount of enemies overwhelming you or a difficult puzzle to solve – but because your controls are finicky lead to some frustrating moments.

When your finished with the Story portion of the game there is a standard “Free Play” mode, letting you play the levels again using all of your unlocked guns and characters. It’s a nice way of getting a little extra length out of the title, and I’m sure there are plenty of secrets that can’t be achieved through the normal playthrough (for you achievement junkies), but once I was finished I didn’t feel the urge to come back and play through it again.

Multiplayer was fun while I had a chance to play it; there seemed to be a lack of people playing, although it might have been due to the time I was able to play the game myself. I image that weekday afternoons aren’t the peak times for this game. The multiplayer features 16 player battles with the normal modes for games of it’s genre – Skirmish, Team Skirmish, and Capture The Flag.

Overall, for a title that goes for $9.99, I’m surprisingly pleased with the product. It seems that the devs really put some work into the title and the gameplay is genuinely fun. It may not be something you’ll be playing for weeks or months to come but it serves well as a fun distraction for small chunks of time.