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Reviews The horror... the horror, September 6, 2008 By cward20 from Austin, TX Anyone who has goofed off at work or has stopped in at their local library to kill time should be familiar with the company Pop Cap Games. The company best is known for popular internet games such as: the Bejeweled series and Alchemy. Their games are so popular with casual gamers and slackers (like myself) that the company believed they could get people to pay for games that can be played for free over the internet. Enter the second installment in the Pop Cap Hits series featuring two amusing little time-killers: Zuma, and Heavy Weapon. In Zuma you play as a frog statue that spits out colored marbles, there is a winding track around the frog, filled with slowly moving colored marbles. The goal is to match three or more marbles of the same color and clear all the marbles before they reach the Aztec statue at the end of the track. Once you have cleared all the marbles you move on to the next board. In Heavy Weapon you control a tank that can only move left or right as the background scrolls forward, with gameplay fairly reminiscent of old-school shooters like Megamania and Space Invaders. There are some fairly standard power-ups, but that still isn’t enough to distract you from the fact that you are more or less playing Space Invaders ’08.
Gameplay: 6/10
The gameplay in Heavy Weapon is fun for about an hour: blowing up planes and helicopters, using nukes and the “Mega-Laser” to destroy everything on the screen; but once the hour is up (and you’ve beaten it) you’ll realized just how average it is. One unique thing about this game is that you use the right analog stick to aim and fire. The most satisfying part of this game is using the “Mega-Laser,” which shoots a giant beam across the screen killing any enemy in one hit. Now for the negative side Zuma. Now you’re probably thinking what’s wrong with Zuma? I played it on the web and it was fun. Two words: awful controls. Unlike internet versions of this game it’s nearly impossible to aim other than in about four spots. The problem is that you use the left analog stick and it is way too sensitive, even a slight turn in either direction will cause the frog to spin halfway around. To give you some idea of how bad it is, try playing Kaboom on the Atari 2600 without the trackball controller. On the positive side, there are some power-ups hidden in the marbles; one for about every 20 marbles. There are three power-ups: one causes the marbles to either go backward, one stops them, and one blows up all marbles of the same color.
Story: 5/10
These games shouldn’t have a story, none of the action in them really warrants one. In Heavy Weapon it’s the 1980’s, the USSR has bombed the US and the only thing that can stop them is your super-advanced tank. The story for Zuma is even more asinine, and is not even worth going into here.
Graphics: 9/10
The graphics are really the strong point of both games: they are colorful, vibrant, smooth textured, and some of the best I’ve seen on the PS2. My only complaint is that I don’t like the cheap comic book style graphics used in the cut-scenes of Heavy Weapon.
Audio: 8/10
The sound effects on both games are well done, and the loud Heavy Metal soundtrack to Heavy Weapon fits the game perfectly, while being enjoyable to listen to; although not quite good enough to be part of a video game cover-band’s repertoire. The music in Zuma on the other hand, is fairly average and not at all memorable.
Challenge: 6/10
I am looking at the intended challenge here, not the broken controls of Zuma. Both games aren’t very demanding on players, as they were originally made for short
15-30 minute bursts of gameplay to alleviate the boredom of the office. Even though each game does have a hard mode, unlocked by beating them on normal, it’s still not enough to keep you playing for over two hours. The most challenging part to me was actually playing these games for more than 15 minutes at a time.
Replay Value: 1/10
There is Literally NO REPLAY VALUE to these games, once you’ve beaten them that’s it. Seriously, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play Zuma again on the web after this. The biggest disappointment is that there’s no real end boss to Heavy Weapon, the game just starts over, but doesn’t even get any harder. This game would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if they would have thrown in some unlockables, they could have least given you another game to unlock.
Final Conclusion: 5/10
So is this game worth the $20 price tag? Hay-ell no! why pay $20 for something you can get for free legally. The people over at Pop Cap Games really must be out of touch to think that gamers would pay $20 for this fit-load of shuck. As bad as it is, it would have been a cool game in 1980 for the Atari 2600 (even with the 4-bit graphics), the simplistic and repetitive gameplay would have fit the first-generation aesthetic perfectly, not to mention the trackball controller. Honestly, I can’t even recommend renting this game, the five dollars you’ll spend on renting it is still a loss of five dollars. For the same price you can get a medium pizza and a one-liter soda at Little Caesar’s, you may get diarrhea but at least you won’t get ripped-off.
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