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Genre: Arcade Action

Developer: Big Fish Games

Minimum System Requirements: 400MHz G3, Mac OS X, 128MB RAM

Price: $19.99

Demo: 15MB (must provide e-mail address)

Understand up front that I'm a sucker for art deco. I've absolutely no interest in architecture and only a passing interest in art, but I'm huge into everything art deco. There was a majesty to that movement we haven't seen since, and likely won't again for generations to come. It's as if everything was built with a sense of wonder and optimism that it would last forever, which it of course wouldn't, and that makes me sad for life but happy for humanity.

I bring this up because Big Fish Games' Atlantis Sky Patrol is designed with art deco visuals. Big deal, right? Who cares from what movement the developers drew their visuals? Well, I'd guess a lot of people will, because visuals are often the main element that separates games such as this from games such as this.

You actually need look no further than Big Fish themselves to find Zuma Deluxe, Pirate Poppers (recently reviewed by Jack Jose) and the original Atlantis. I guess the genre is referred to as "popper games," but I prefer Jack's "combine things so they blow up" dubbing. That's the point, after all, no matter how you dress it.

There's a bit of a story in Atlantis Sky Patrol, which places you neither in Atlantis nor in the sky, making the ironic title a double misnomer. How's that for fun! See, there are 100 doomsday devices scattered about the Earth (because when planning doomsday, the Atlantians understood the importance of redundancy). So, you move across a map of the Earth in a predetermined route to disable these devices.

The devices themselves are game boards that contain trains of balls which glide along winding paths to a generator. It's your job to prevent this from happening, which you do by shooting balls of various colors into the trains, creating a match of three or more colors in a row, which causes the similarly colored, touching balls to disappear and the train to double back into itself. Once all of the balls from all of the trains are gone, you advance to the next level.

Atlantis Sky Patrol adds an interesting twist, though. Along with the moving trains, the game board also contains a varying number of static orbs that must be destroyed. It's these static orbs that allow for the creation of new trains, so they must be destroyed to end the level. Focus on them too much, though, and the trains will get too far along to stop. Focus on the trains, and you'll end up with too many to handle as more and more are generated.

And so, Atlantis Sky Patrol requires a balance of strategy not needed by many other games in this genre. It also means that things will get a bit more hectic, but they've compensated for this by including a good degree of power-ups you can catch throughout the game, as well as coins that can be used to purchase upgrades to your shooters. My favorite was the ability to incrementally increase the ship's ability to attract the power-ups so I didn't have to get directly under them to catch them. By only needing to get close before they were pulled to the ship, I was able to focus on stopping those trains of balls.

Aside from the ridiculous number of levels, Atlantis Sky Patrol contains a mini-game in which you have to shoot floating targets to collect even more coins. Shoot the wrong ones, however, and the targets will be destroyed without wielding coins. This ends up being pretty easy, though, because there doesn't appear to be a time limit on the mini-game, allowing you to take your time and line up your shots.

It's not just the new game elements that separate Atlantis Sky Patrol from its competitors, however, it's the polish. Many of the shareware games available today feel unfinished, almost, in their presentation. Atlantis Sky Patrol is complete. Remember a few years ago when big name Mac game publishers were releasing a slew of consumer titles? That's what Atlantis Sky Patrol feels like; a small game with big financial backing, allowing the developers the time and finances required to fine tune every aspect. This, then, makes the game more enjoyable than it otherwise would be. When you download, purchase and play Atlantis Sky Patrol, you won't get the nagging feeling that you could've saved $20 by playing the equivalent, free version online.

Ends up, I enjoyed Atlantis Sky Patrol more than I expected to. The art deco design helped, but that wasn't all of it. I mean, a bad game's a bad game no matter how much it looks like the Chrysler Building or a Flash Gordon Sunday strip by Alex Raymond. Instead, it was also the thoroughness of the theme (mixed up as it is), the new gameplay twists, the stability (only one crash, and none beyond the first time I played it), and the notion that a ridiculous number of doomsday devices left behind by an ancient race can be overcome by shooting colored balls at it. Would that all of life's problems could be handled the same way.

Download Atlantis Sky Patrol.