Ark: Rival Ball Tournament [by Longbow Digital Arts]

DXBall2 is something of legend in the Indie community.  No matter who you are and what type of games you like, you almost certainly have played DX-Ball2.  In fact it goes way beyond the game, the award handed out at the Independent Games Festival for the best indie game each year is named in the honor of the designer of DXBall2.

With that said it is nearly impossible to live up to the legacy that was created by that game.  The graphics and game play quality have set it up on a high pedestal that nearly every Arkanoid game is still trying to meet.  In creating a sequel to the game, LongBow Digital arts had to do so without the designer of DX-Ball 2 as sadly he had passed away from cancer.  LDA went a slightly different direction with Rival Ball, and now with Rival Ball Tournament they have done their best to turn the Arkanoid genre upside down.  Unfortunately in my mind they have come up short, but the attempt here was at least notable.

Rival Ball Tournament takes the verses idea first popularized in the Break Ball series of Arkanoid games and takes it up a notch by offering blazing fast versus play over the internet.  The game itself also has taken a slightly different angle on the Arkanoid game by offering hexagonal bricks instead of the typical rectangular ones.  There is also a large number of power-ups and fairly well polished graphics to go along with a solid sound track. 

However the game suffers from a couple of short comings.  First off there is a huge luck factor involved in the game.  If you happen to get the right power-ups at the right time (early on in the game instead of when the level is nearly cleared) you will be at a huge advantage over your opponent.  I found this very frustrating as I could quickly tell if I was going to win or lose just based on the power-ups that I received.  In addition, instead of carrying on the tradition of different paddles types with different abilities that Break Ball 2 started, or adding an easy to use ability to put spin on the ball like Z-Ball and many other games since have done, RBT offered a more straight forward game that when it came down to it played more like pong than a super-charged Arkanoid/Pong mesh.  In playing a versus game I really wished I could put some serious spin on the ball like you can in the Break Ball 2 versus game.  Doing so allows you to try and put a few past your opponent that you otherwise would not have.

Overall this game does provide a good presentation and I think that the fast game play along with the solid visuals and fun somewhat Street Fighter II-esque matches will provide a lot of people a lot of fun, but I cannot help but point out that had the game incorporated some of the better innovations to be done in Arkanoid games of late to go along with its great Internet game play, this game would have been truly unbeatable instead of just above average.

Added: May 5th 2004
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
Score:
Hits: 4117
Language: english   

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