Collab Ball

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

.

Review:

Collab Ball is a 3D Platformer released on PlayStation 4 in 2022 and ported to PC and Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game has you guiding a ball to an exit in obstacle course-style stages.

Collab Ball’s presentation is fairly simple, using 3D geometric shapes for its stages, obstacles, and your ball, with stages generally constructed of hexagon-shaped pillars. It’s nothing extraordinary, yet the framerates seem to be oddly low given how little is being done here. This is all backed by a sufficient but forgettable synthesized soundtrack.

While the image of moving a ball through obstacle courses may bring to mind games like Super Monkey Ball, Collab Ball is simply nowhere near on the same level as those games. This is because its physics are sluggish and inconsistent, it uses jumping but makes this mechanic as joyless as possible, and its stages seem less like a test of skill than a test of patience – how long are you willing to put up with this slow, tedious game with terrible physics, in a genre that is all about physics?

I’ll answer that question for you – don’t. Don’t bother with Collab Ball, especially when you have other better games you could be playing instead, like the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball games. By comparison, this is just a waste of your time and money.

tl;dr – Collab Ball is a 3D Platformer that has you rolling and jumping a ball through an obstacle course to get to an exit. Unfortunately, the gameplay here is a tedious slog with terrible, sluggish, inconsistent physics. Don’t buy this game when you have multiple better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: D

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Eli Goodman, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}