Mobile GameClusterball
developed by Overloaded
Almost a fast paced adrenaline rush. Almost.
Clusterball is a high octane futuristic sport set in the far utopian future. Players are put in the helm of sleek hi-tech flying machines that are capable of traversing large amounts of space in a matter of few seconds. For those who are conscious of the world around them then they would understand when I call Clusterball as a sort of hi-tech version of a free for all quiditch from Harry Potter. That’s right, in this utopian future, you get to pick up specially designed balls from tracks built in an arena and sort of shoot those balls into goals designated in the air.
Clusterball is actually a port from a PC game. The graphics of this port is actually quite pretty and while not as powerful and gorgeous as the PC version, it comes of as a very familiar duplicate. The level designs are almost taken straight from the PC and are easily recognizable if you’ve played the PC version. Despite the lower resolution and polygon count, everything is still pretty and way ahead in comparison with other 3d mobile games. The crafts you fly all look sleek with their aerodynamic frames and just glitter in their colors. While there may only be 1 craft design, the developers still managed to provide cool color schemes to choose from. All in all, l graphically this game is a treat for and can give any 3D mobile game a run for its money.
And just like the PC version, the gameplay hasn't change much. You still compete in a free for all competition in very recognizable areas such as huge desert wastelands dotted with Egyptian relics to wide grasslands covered by trees and the occasional large body of water as well as the famous Stone Henge. You still try to pick up balls by lining up your craft through the tracks in the ground and then taking them up to sort of shoot the huge hoop-like-structure floating in the sky. At the same time this is happening, your rivals are trying to do the same thing but when they’re not trying to go for a goal they’ll be trying to shoot you and each other down trying to steal the ball you’ve already loaded and lined behind your craft or sometimes a little of both. Its not an uncommon sight to actually see a craft pick up a ball from the ground, shoot a rival on the way up and steal that rival’s ball and head on to the goal for a score while trying to avoid being shoot down. Controls of the game on the other hand will take some time getting used to. On my first play thru the enemy A.I. was creaming me ruthlessly as I tried to orient myself to the game mechanics. The score was around 10 for me and the rest of them in the high 90s or 100s and that’s just a few minutes into the game. And when I say ruthless creaming by the A.I.s I really mean ruthless creaming as the A.I.s kept on picking on me even though the score was roughly already skewed and I was at the bottom of the heap. Even on the easy mode the computer controlled ships still manage to leave me in the dust. While the learning curve is very steep, once you get the hand of it the A.I.s starts getting a bit more boring as there are a lot of tricks that you’ll soon pick up that translates your robotic competition from ruthless creamers to just plain annoying pests. Pilots just have to find out that acceleration is not everything as every now and then you’ll find the need for sudden deceleration or you might crash into one of those pretty landscapes. You’ll soon want to move up against human players as the fun wouldn’t be the same anymore.
Controls, as I’ve said, are a bit hard to get used to as you have 3 different states of acceleration (using the 1,2 and 3 numpads) as well as another 3 different states of deceleration (7, 8 and 9 numpads). You still maneuver your ship with the left and right d-pad and you’re able to change the camera view from first person to the third person view.
Clusterball is one of those type of games that you pick up for a quick shoot out with the gang (assuming you can get everyone to buy a copy of the game and all have the same sort of phone to play the game) and is clearly fun. However, this is detracted by its steep learning curve and the fact that to play with your friends, everyone has to have a copy of the game and a phone capable of playing the game – kind of a lot of hard work for something you’ll just want for a quick fun isn’t it? However, if you manage to get past all those barriers, Clusterball Mobile while not really providing the same adrenaline rush as its PC counterpart still manages to make itself an entertaining game.
Reviewed on 16/01/06 with Nokia N-Gage
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