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Preview: pop-popReviewed By: Erica Marceau Review Date: May 28, 2002
Sending bricks to your opponent is one way to win because the more bricks they have to deal with, the easier they will drop below the Line of Destiny and they'll lose. You collect bricks to send over by hitting more than one brick at a single time and send the bricks by hitting the ball with your paddle. At first, these bricks are hollow, which means if they are hit by your opponent, they will be returned to you as metal bricks. Metal bricks take two hits by a ball to disappear so the more bricks you send to your opponent, the more metal bricks they can return to you.
Then there are the flowers to which I alluded. Each pop-pop character has a unique attack which can flood the opponent's area with flowers to send rubber duckies to act as deflecters to brick-spewing robots. You power up your attack. If you hit the ball with your paddle after it's charged up, you release the attack. If the ball hits the paddle before it's charged up all of the way, the attack fails and you still lose the energy. You can also use the energy to charge your paddle so the ball goes through more bricks, which is a good way to get rid of metal bricks. Yet, you can't charge an attack or charge your paddle if you don't have enough energy, and you get energy by hitting the ball with your paddle. Then there are the power-ups and power-downs, playing against other people (via GameRanger, an in-game tracker, or on the same computer), puzzle mode, the blue water, and music that puts you in a brick-bashing mood.  When pop-pop comes out, doing battle will take on a whole new meaning.
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Seeing pop-pop for the first time made me groan in disappointment. I had signed up for the beta under the impression it was a fighting game, but when I saw it in action all I saw was a Breakout clone. Then I started playing and all such thoughts flew out of my head as I worked on mastering pop-pop's intracies, and then I realized something...pop-pop is a fighting game, but instead of fighting with fists or guns, you fight with colored bricks and flowers... lots of flowers.
So, what happens when your opponent sends you a dozen hollow bricks and your ball is on the other side of the board? You turn your paddle into a magnet and attract the ball no matter where it is. Once you have control over the ball, you can then place it where it will do the most damage, such as destroying those hollow bricks. Yet such power comes with a price; every brick you have saved to send to your opponent will be wiped out after using the magnet.