Ball Fighter

Genre: Match-3 Puzzle

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Same System Play)

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Review:

Ball Fighter is a family-friendly Match-3 Puzzle game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2009, and later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released. In this game, players must contend with multicolored balls falling down toward them from above, and respond by pulling them down and then tossing them back up in vertical lines of 3 or more of the same color to clear them and any like-colored balls that are adjacent.

The presentation here isn’t great, with the simple core gameplay elements decorated with generic-looking cartoony characters and backed by repetitive synthesized music. I suppose at the very least it doesn’t interfere with the gameplay, but it doesn’t do the game any favors either.

The core gameplay here is okay, but not especially compelling or all that original. I’ve seen this formula in numerous other games over the years. Having said that, this game does do some interesting things with its various game modes, such as its Brain Breaker mode that has players attempting to play two copies of the game at once (one on each screen), or the multiplayer mode that has each player holding half of the Nintendo 3DS to play.

It’s these odd and experimental features that make Ball Fighter at least mildly interesting, and the game may hold some interest for Puzzle game fans due to this. However, mildly interesting doesn’t translate to a truly compelling experience, and I think most players have better options for Puzzle games on Nintendo 3DS.

tl;dr – Ball Fighter is a Puzzle game that has players grabbing and matching columns of like-colored balls. There’s nothing especially original or compelling about the gameplay here, but the odd, experimental game modes do at least make this interesting. It may be worth a look for Puzzle game fans, but most players won’t find this game to be particularly noteworthy.

Grade: C+

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