Pop Island

Genre: Action

Players: 1-8 Team Competitive (Local Wireless), Download Play Supported

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Review:

Pop Island is a multiplayer-focused Action game first released on the DSiWare service in 2009, and later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released. This game has players controlling one of a team of characters in a game of capture the flag.

The presentation in this game is surprisingly good, considering the game’s age and the humble hardware of the Nintendo DSi this game was first released on. This game uses colorful, blocky 3D visuals to depict its world and characters, with the presentation remaining consistent and the 60FPS framerates staying steady even as a multitude of characters fills your screen. These visuals are backed by an energetic soundtrack that fits the game’s tone well, but isn’t especially memorable.

The gameplay here has players choosing one of a variety of characters that they’ll gradually unlock as they play, with each character having a specialty – land, sea, and air. Players use the map on the bottom screen to locate flags to capture, and must maneuver their character to retrieve flags and return them to their base faster than the opposing team. Players have an attack to try to blast away opponents and relieve them of a flag if they’re carrying one, and a jump to help them dodge these attacks and navigate terrain. There are also power-ups littered across the battlefield in a manner similar to Mario Kart. The controls are simple, and really my only complaint here is the complete inability to change the camera – it is always fixed in both distance and perspective.

Another issue I have here is that the game’s single-player gameplay is pretty unimpressive, with players just going through and unlocking characters and maps without much variety beyond that. However, this game is clearly built around its multiplayer – not only is this game’s support of up to 8 players via local wireless impressive, but this game even supports Download Play, meaning that so long as each player has a 3DS, DSi, or even an original model Nintendo DS, only one player needs to own a copy of the game for the entire group to get in on the action.

There is one other issue with Pop Island – despite that its $5 is a pretty good deal for what’s on offer here, its sequel Pop Island: Paperfield offers an even better deal with a price tag of only $2. Both games feature roughly interchangeable gameplay, so if you get only one game, Paperfield is the way to go. However, if you enjoy that game and want more maps and characters to play with, the original Pop Island is also worth snatching up (and this game unlocks content in Paperfield as well, giving you even more reason to get both).

tl;dr – Pop Island is an Action game that has up to eight players playing a wacky game of Capture the Flag. This game is short on single-player content, but shines in multiplayer. The $5 price tag is a pretty good deal too… though not nearly as good a deal as the $2 price tag for Pop Island: Paperfield. Still, if you have a group of friends who own 3DS or DS systems and want to throw down, Pop Island is well worth getting.

Grade: B-

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