Wii Ware Review: Pop

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Pop
Genre: Puzzle

Review by: Kenzo287

When it was first announced that Nintendo would soon allow developers to release stand alone Wii titles through the Wii Shop Channel in the form of the WiiWare service the first company to jump on board was Nnooo. The Australian based developer had this title ready months ago and it has been polished to a fine sheen. The concept is simple. Pop bubbles underwater. In fact forget the underwater part if you want, it is only implied. While you may think seven dollars is a little much for a game about popping bubbles keep in mind that for ten you can buy that N64 cartridge that's sitting in your closet collecting dust.

The game's graphics feature no flaws or glitches of any kind, mostly thanks to the lack of actual objects in the game. There are a wide variety of bubbles that show up in several different colors as you progress through the game. The backgrounds are also well done and are a smooth ocean gradient that changes colors as the game proceeds.

The sound is one of the best things about Pop, yet it is also one of the most disappointing. The ambient music is the constant theme. Everywhere you go in the game you hear some form of ambient music with a beat to it. It all works magically and is not in the least bit out of place. The music is also perfectly slowed down when the game slows down and picks up the pace when needed. The disappointing thing about the audio selection is when I went into the audio menu through the options menu. For some strange reason I though that this would be a game that would support a custom soundtrack off of the SD card slot similar to Excite Truck. I was saddened deeply when I found two volume meters which were thankfully turned to the maximum already.

There is online leader boards but I have yet to find a way to access them without going through and playing a game till the very end which can take upwards of 20 minutes plus at a time. There are two game modes that feature the leader boards. The first is Normal mode that is your basic get the high score type of game. Then is advanced in which you need to reach an insanely high score and at the time of posting there were only two people on that list, both of which being members of the development team. There is also a Chill mode in which you pop bubbles to your heart's delight. You won't be playing this mode too often as it is boring and provides no point to it.

All in all this is a good first stab at simple but fun games on WiiWare. The game is priced maybe two bucks too high but seven dollars is still a reasonable price to pay for a quirky fun game. Add in four player vs mode and this is a game that you could play for hours at a time.
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Graphics: [7/10]
Sound: [7.5/10]
Gameplay: [8/10]

Overall: 7.5

By Kenzo287

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