Magnetica Twist - WiiWare review

Download Magntetica Twist (known as Actionloop Twist in the UK), even if it’s only to experience the awesome ball-clack noise. For less ardent audiophiles, there’s also a polished puzzler here as well. The premise? Your Mii is plopped into a rotating cannon – twisted by turning the remote – that fires coloured marbles. Around your cannon a track of balls snake towards The Hole of Bad Things (our name). Chain like-coloured balls with a well-aimed marble and they vanish. It’s old as the hills. Well, if your hills date back to 1998 when developer Mitchell released Puzz Loop, anyway.

Basic survival evolves into a hunt for chain reactions as further balls slam together to fill the gaps. Conceptually, it’s simple stuff, but it’s the physicality of the final product that brings it all together. Fat and heavy, the marbles aren’t merely functional icons. They handle exactly like the substantial parts of a mechanical contraption you’re trying to fend off. The variety of ways Mitchell repackages the core game impresses. Quick Play’s a pleasant time-waster, Challenge is an endurance run of increasingly awkward ball streams and Quest offers missions with specific criteria for completion. Enlist three friends and you can tackle a bevy of co-operative and battle scenarios sure to turn the air blue with marble-inspired cursing. Lack of Wi-Fi additions aside, it’s the polished Dr. Mario approach to WiiWare all over again – only this time built on a great puzzler.

Jul 8, 2008