The Ball PC
An ancient people create a weapon/tool/magic gadget in The Ball that you use to find your way out of the ancient ruins and using the Ball you not only find your way out but uncover some of mankind's biggest secrets.
Ratings:
Graphics & Audio: 14/25,
Gameplay: 20/25,
Creativity 24/25,
Fun 23/25
Total: 81/100
In these days of $60 first person shooters and games that require accessories that cost a hundred dollars or more to fully enjoy a $20 game that doesn't stink is worth a look. The Ball is actually far from a smelly mess as it works pretty well as an independent puzzle adventure that is first and foremost fun.
You play an archaeologist searching some Mexican ruins when you tumble into a series of caverns and are hopelessly trapped, hopelessly except for the ancient device you stumble across. The Ball is an Unreal 3 Mod taken to its full length first person puzzle game with some good looking environments and well made puzzles.
The game starts simply with you tumbling into some ancient ruins with no hope of getting out the way you fell in so you search for another way. Instead you find an ancient device much like a handheld jackhammer and an odd looking large ball that is controlled by the device.
You push or pull the ball from a distance with the device and solve puzzles in order to get further along in your escape, uh adventure. Along the way toward freedom you battle some beasts and find out some general magical wonders and kick some butt, skeleton and zombie like.
Not only do you get to puzzle your way through the ruins but boss battles are fought against skeletons, zombies and other undead type creatures. The battles against creatures are not nearly as good as other games but they do lend a certain fun to squash, smash and grind undead critters with a huge rolling ball.
Using a simple ball there are plenty of puzzles to solve but when you add a gravity field to the ball, spikes and even tying ropes to it you have an even greater complexity to those puzzles. There really are some great puzzles you have to figure out using simple and multi part puzzles with a wide variety of things along with the ball.
Some puzzles use explosives while others use objects like spikes or being able to tie things to the ball to move them and further along you get to pulverize creatures that attack you. The Ball is great for a quick, four or five hour adventure that also includes some quick wave battles against monsters for some additional fun.
The game does have a weakness in these battle moments as the puzzle adventuring portions are much better than the battles but it does add something to the game. The Ball does a great job with the physics part of the equation but is set back a bit by the battles and fighting sections.
The monsters come in two varieties, bugs ready for squishing and those that tend to move a bit faster than you can react with your cumbersome ball weapon. You are forced to use both the environment and the ball to defeat them so the better monsters do take some work to defeat but that is about the only challenge with a few of the boss battles.
Mostly dealing with the monsters means simply swatting them from afar with the ball and watching their pieces either shatter or splatter. Monsters for the most part are easy to deal with but the puzzles are the main focus and great from start to end with some ingenious and interesting challenges.
The Ball has some good looking graphics and effects but nothing you would not expect from an independent game and you do get what you pay for. The games audio is also about the same with just above average quality but nothing more so you do get a great game for the price.
While The Ball has a definite lower budget feel it does a great job with what it does best, a great adventure puzzle game with a few monsters thrown in for fun. I highly recommend The Ball available as a Steam download or from several publishers depending on region.
Iceberg Interactive is the publisher of The Ball for the United Kingdom region.