|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Review: Super Pop and DropReviewed By: Jack Jose Review Computer: 800MHz iMac, 256MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.2.1 Review Date: June 19, 2003
Ernest Hemingway once confided to me, "Addictions are funny things," and, though I'm certain he wasn't talking about Super Pop and Drop, and that he did not mean that they were funny in the way that when you realize you are addicted you cannot stop walking up to people and telling them so you can delight in their cheerful laughter, I am certain that I've lost track of where this sentence started and that he would be dissatisfied with and angered by both its length and heft. With this certainty established, I could offer to cheer him up with Super Pop and Drop.
At the simple level, there are four or so colors of bubbles in several rows across the top of the screen, and you are launching additional bubbles into their slowly advancing ranks. When your bubble collides to make a group of three or more, they are released from the group, and they plummet to the floor, bringing with them any other bubbles that were attached solely to them. ["But how can they not hurt you falling from the ceiling, when their slow advance can kill?" you ask. We have dispensed of these foolish questions in the previous paragraph.] As you advance through higher levels of difficulty, additional colors are added, including black balls that you cannot pop, only drop. Your arsenal increases to include a saw blade that you can propel to lop off large chunks of bubbles, a spiral that can make a group of bubbles the same color, three grenades that pop a group of nearby bubbles, and, advancing from the ceiling with the bubbles, a spring that causes the bubbles to retreat a row when you hit it. Your mission is to contain the madness.
Go ahead, feed your addiction. Get Super Pop and Drop.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
. |
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
|
||||
Pop and Drop, by Gamehouse, is a "bubble ceiling" type game. "Bubble ceiling" games, a sub genre of the puzzle games, are where candy or bubbles or dinosaur eggs are inexplicably advancing from the ceiling, and though you cannot stop their advance, you can thin their ranks by, even more inexplicably, joining them together with similarly colored pieces. Fortunately, Gamehouse wastes no time creating a silly storyline that some game creators provide to explain the situation, letting you focus on good, addictive bubble-bursting fun.
Though Super Pop and Drop is similar to many online games, including some popular Yahoo titles, it has enough advantages over those online games to become an instant time killer favorite. For one, a target allows you to see an image of where you are aiming your next shot, instead of hoping you played the angle correctly. And the downloadable version has a flotilla of options available, only some of which are available in the free online version. Among those options are the ability to save your high scores, to start again from the highest level you ever achieved, three ability levels: easy, normal, and hard; and a second version of the game: strategy or "perpetual" mode. In the timed version, you must eliminate all the bubbles before the advancing title screen pushes a bubble across your border. In the perpetual version, the bubbles are endlessly airlifted in, with your only hope being to survive to see as many as possible burst. (A pretty dim light to keep you shining, if you ask me.) It's all very simple. But it is also addictive. The wide range of game levels allows even young children to experience some success, while a few levels up become frustratingly challenging even for those of us who could make a living killing time, if there were only a way to do so. The gradual advance in difficulty as the game progresses, along with the tantalizing thought that just a couple bubbles away is the one color that, angled precisely off the wall, will explode twenty of the scum-loving bubbles from their moorings, strewing them helplessly in the nether region below our screens, makes it very difficult to stop playing.
My advice on purchasing this game is similar to other games that can be played online. If you just want to waste time, and you are not expecting a phone call (or you have a separate internet line), then keep playing online. However, if you genuinely like the game and want to keep track of your progress, or want to be able to quickly call it up on your computer without interacting with your browser, then the game is easily worth the $19.95.