The App Shelf for iPhone and iPod touch
Top Shelf Apps for week of May 15, 2012New apps added every Tuesday! |
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Reviews
Video Review: Bust-a-Move Enjoyable, But Not Up to Expectations
Price: $4.99
App Store Link: Full / No Lite Version
Verdict: Like it
Replay Value: Medium High
Pros: Verses Mode.
Cons: Relatively poor graphics, weak storyline, and a high price tag.
Bottom Line: Bust-a-Move for iPhone feels like a quick mobile port and didn’t live up to my high expectations of title based on previous experiences. But it’s still Bust-a-Move.
Personally, I’ve always been a fan of the Bust-a-Move game series ever since I played it for the SNES. Since then, I’ve played the title on several other portable platforms, including the Gameboy Advance and PSP, and unfortunately, for the very first time, the title didn’t live up to my expectations.
Bust-a-Move is a unique trajectory-based, match 3 puzzler, in which a cluster of colored bubbles hangs from the ceiling. To solve the stage, you must shoot additional colored bubbles at the cluster in order to make matches and pop the bubbles. Every few shots, a new row of bubbles drops down from the ceiling, and when any of the bubbles hit the threshold line, it’s game over. Carefully aimed shots and good use of power-ups can make this challenging task a bit easier. The iPhone version of the title contains three game modes: Story, challenge, and 2-player versus.
While it’s great to finally have Bust-a-Move on the iPhone, it feels like a cheap port of a cell phone app instead of being optimize it for the iPhone OS. The story mode is slow and campy, the graphics aren’t on par with other major mobile platforms, and the gameplay just seems to be generally lacking from previous versions of the title.
The only standout feature that I saw in Bust-a-Move was the inclusion of a 2-player versus mode that let’s you battle head-to-head via Bluetooth connection.
Overall, the highly anticipated arrival of Bust-a-Move for iPhone was somewhat of a let down for me. While the core gameplay remains the same, the app is missing the lighthearted fun of its predecessors. Other than versus mode and the name brand, Bust-a-Move doesn’t bring anything to the table that you won’t find in similar titles. If you think you’ll get a lot out of verses mode gameplay with your friends, Bust-a-Move may be worth the price. If you think you can live without it, Gameloft’s $0.99 Bubble Bash will offer similar gameplay, debatably better graphics, and just as much fun (if not more) at a fraction of the price.
