Bubble Blitz
Score: 50% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Binary Sun Developer: Binary Sun Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle/ Edutainment
Graphics & Sound: Ho Hum….. I can't think of any other way to start this review of Bubble Blitz and I can't think of too many other words to describe the graphics of the game. Bubble Blitz uses very simple 2-D graphics that are almost Anime in style, but not quite. There are bright colors for the bubbles, a few 3-D highlights, but the effect of bursting your bubbles is not memorable. You do have the option of changing the design of what is in your bubble. One of the ones that I didn’t like at first was the letters. If you have a green bubble, the letter G is in your bubble. This can be useful if you want to help teach a young child their colors and letters, so bravo for Binary Sun for putting an aspect into the game that could be used for educational purposes. The soundtrack is the standard electronic-sounding background music along with simple bubble popping sound effects that don't add anything or draw away from the game. In fact, a few minutes after I quit the game, I couldn’t tell you what the music or sound effects sounded like. You do have the option of muting both the music and sound effects, which can be useful in some situations. More about that later!!
Gameplay: I don’t want to get any of us in trouble, so if you’re a boss, a manager, a supervisor, a team leader, an IT person, or anybody that is in control of workers, please stop reading now!! Are they gone? Good. Bubble Blitz is one of those games that I call time killers or time wasters. This is a game you would play when you are waiting for your significant other to get ready, when you have finished your presentations at work and don’t have anything else to do, or every other game is too big for your computer. The idea of the game is simple. Burst combinations of more than two bubbles in a horizontal or diagonal line as fast as you can. Once the bubble is burst, one that was above or next to it will shift into its spot possibly creating more combinations for you to burst. If you burst a big enough combination of bubbles in a row, you can receive a bomb. Once all two or more combination of bubbles are gone, you can use that bomb to exploit a single bubble to possibly create a new combination that might just get the bubbles rolling again. Once the combinations are gone, you're done. That’s all there is. So like many games before it, Bubble Blitz is something you play when nobody else at work is looking. I hope I don’t get anybody into trouble at work by letting out that little tidbit.
Difficulty: Bubble Blitz is very simple and doesn’t ramp up in difficulty the longer you play it. There are no second levels, no shorter time constraints, no difference in the game from the 1st or the 100th time that you play it. Burst the bubbles as fast as you can. That’s it, that’s all you do. How do you burst a bubble? On to the next section!
Game Mechanics: I am going to try really hard not to repeat anything from another review I did on a game with bubbles, but its going to be really tough. This is a mouse controlled game, where the only time I used the keyboard was to put in my name on the high score list. You burst a bubble combination by clicking on it. That’s all there is to it. Like I said before, this is a simple game to play when you don’t have much else to do. Parents can use it to increase their young children’s hand-eye coordination, and to teach them their colors and numbers, for which I applaud Binary Sun for that aspect. You've seen this type of game before and I am sure you will see it again. It's not a terrible game, just not ground-breaking and somewhat dull.
-Wickserv, GameVortex Communications AKA Eric Wickwire
Minimum System Requirements: 400Mhz Intel or AMD processor, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 7.0 or newer, Direct3D compatible video chipset   Test System: Windows XP, 3.00 GHz Pentium 4 Processor, Integrated 5.1 channel audio 1 GHz of RAM, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 9002
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