Developers: Popcap Games
Website: Zuma’s Revenge! Official Site
Publishers: Popcap Games
PEGI rating: 3+
This format: PC
Much like the original Zuma, you are a super-powered, color-stone spitting frog out to save itself from some exotic-type natives on an island it has landed on. Zuma’s revenge provides just enough updates to the original game to justify itself as a full blown sequel.
Also (as a side note), while the game runs very, very well on a PC, I wouldn’t honestly look forward to this on a console any time soon. As long as you have a mouse to play this with, it’s awesome, but any other way of controlling it can be very frustrating. If you’re playing on a laptop, I highly recommend picking up a real mouse (separate from the optical pad on most laptops) if you don’t already have one. I tried playing without my mouse once and genuinely did not enjoy the game since the controls became extremely awkward.
In Zuma’s Revenge, you progress through the levels similarly to the original Zuma – point and click to shoot colored balls and form chains of three or more matching colors to make them disappear. If you don’t do this quickly enough, the chain of balls will reach the end and you’ll lose a life. No big deal since they aren’t hard to earn and the checkpoints are pretty frequent. So really, none of that has changed from the previous game.
Zuma’s Revenge provides a few key updates that really improve the game. First, there are now several boss fights that you encounter throughout the game that challenge you to do a little more than just create color combination. These boss fights will require at least some strategy that breaks up the monotony of the game when playing straight through.
There are also a few other modes added into Zuma’s Revenge. Besides Adventure (story) mode, there are Challenge, Heroic Frog and Iron Frog modes. Challenge mode allows you to replay all 70 levels under time constraints in which you must score a certain amount of points. Heroic Frog mode is a replay of the Adventure mode but somewhat more difficult, and Iron Frog mode is a gauntlet style of gameplay for yet another added challenge.
Unfortunately, it looks like you’ll be trading off single-player with friends. No multi-player built in.
The graphics and audio in Zuma’s Revenge are both pretty good, but in my opinion there’s room for improvement in the audio department. The graphics are more than entertaining, fun and stand-out to improve the game, but the audio brings that down by being very monotonous through all 70 levels.
Each level in Adventure provides an “Ace” Time – a time in which you should aim to beat the level. The Challenge mode also has “Ace” Scores in addition to the base requirement. These “Ace” standards create an additional fun challenge for gamers.
Nothing that I ran into.
Fortunately, there is really only one negative aspect to me and that is the fact that, even with the added boss levels and modes, Zuma’s Revenge can get fairly repetitive.
Overall, I think this is an awesome game that is worth picking up if you love addicting action-puzzle games. The game has enough updates from the original to make it refreshing and easy to get right back into. Also, the graphics, audio and story all add in to make the game an overall enjoyable experience.
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She's a die-hard gamer who loves to play whatever AND whenever she can - especially if it improves her gamerscore!