{"id":6567,"date":"2009-01-19T16:36:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T15:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.razorianfly.com\/?p=6567"},"modified":"2009-01-19T16:43:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T15:43:41","slug":"clusterball-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/19\/clusterball-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Clusterball [Video]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A review request from some of my good tweeter friends, and designed by Resolution Interactive, Clusterball [App Store<\/a>] is a fast-paced arcade-style game which as the title suggests, sees you collecting a ‘cluster’ of balls. Navigating a plane round a visually rich environment you will aim to gather as many coloured balls as possible, within the time limit.<\/p>\n

Hit the jump for a quick look at Clusterball … <\/p>\n

The game consists of coloured balls placed on platforms or tracks. Within the time limit you must try to create a chain of balls on the tail of your plane, and fly through score rings which are strategically placed through the stages, to secure your score.<\/p>\n

Gameplay<\/strong>
\nUsing tilt-based controls, you will guide a craft onto tracks and aim to catch as many balls as possible. With the game having a total of 10 stages to complete, its going to keep you entertained for short a while. On each stage you’ll find numerous floating rings. These are your scoring rings. Once you have a substantial amount of balls attached to the tail of your craft, flying through one of these rings will score you the points associated with those balls. <\/p>\n

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On the playing screen, you’ll find brake buttons on the lefter most and righter most regions of the screen. Handy for catching or landing on tracks when your flying too fast. Top right you’ll see how a count of how many balls you currently have attached to the tail of your ship, and top left is your current score you have managed to rack-up. There is a real sense of speed to this game. It’s not as good as say .. Need for Speed, but you can definitely feel your speed. Your current in-game speed can also be seen in the bottom right, and of course bottom left you have your damage meter. Although there aren’t that many obstacles during the game, you will realise that misjudgment of scoring rings can be highly damaging. You’ll also encounter floating objects which will obstruct your clear path.<\/p>\n

See it in Action:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Visuals<\/strong>
\nThere is something about the visuals of this game which remind me a bit of Sony’s award-winning franchise WipEout<\/a>. Don’t get me wrong, they are nowhere near as polished as WipEout, but the way the tracks have been constructed, there’s something there. <\/p>\n

Playing the game, the visuals are OK. Frame rate is smooth, tilting is responsive but not overly sensitive, and environments are layered but not cluttered. I’m not sure why but, as good as the visuals are, I did find that progressing through the game the graphics became glich-y as hell and jagged in parts.<\/p>\n

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Price<\/strong>
\nClusterball has seen a major drop from it’s original debut price. At it’s App Store introduction you would of had to shell out \u00c2\u00a35.99. Then on Nov 20th 08 it dropped to \u00c2\u00a34.99. Then it dropped again to \u00c2\u00a32.99, and on Jan 14th 09 it dropped to it’s final price of 59p \/ $0.99. The perfect impulse buy.<\/p>\n

Overall<\/strong>
\nAlthough the game is admittedly repetitive in it’s approach, it’s worth a look. It’s quite fun to play, but something which will probably get old quickly. Is it worth 59p? Considering this was \u00c2\u00a35.99 at launch, it’s a steal. Again, nothing to rave over but it’s sure to kill 30 mins on the train …<\/p>\n

Current status:<\/strong> It’s worth a look …<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed at:<\/strong> v2.0
\nReviewed on Firmware:<\/strong> 2.2
\nDownload size:<\/strong> 13.2MB
\nReleased on:<\/strong> 22nd Oct 2008
\nRetails for:<\/strong> \u00c2\u00a30.59 \/ $0.99 (Originally \u00c2\u00a35.99 \/ $9.99)<\/p>\n

Compatible with:<\/strong> iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 \/ iPhone Classic \/ iPhone 3G<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review request from some of my good tweeter friends, and designed by Resolution Interactive, Clusterball [<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16,17],"tags":[4,137,1415,1414,3501],"class_list":["post-6567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-app-store","category-iphone","category-ipod","tag-apple","tag-appstore","tag-arcade-styled","tag-clusterball","tag-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6567"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6567\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}