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Balls of Fury (DS)

Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
I started playing this game on Wednesday 14 October, 2020  //  I stopped playing this game on: Saturday 14 November, 2020
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

November 14, 2020 09:52:27 AM
Oooh, it's a movie-tie in cash grab game? Maybe...

I haven't seen the movie, but the story mode covers the basics pretty well. In the grand scheme of things I would describe this as a mario-Ping pong. So, there's some wacky powers and such. The controls are pretty good, you control the paddle with your stylus and the game isn't too fast such that sliding it around feels good. You can then add two types of spin (left/right) by pressing a button and there are also "power moves" that are special (non-realistic) moves you can do...well, each character has their own special power move and there are also power serves.

In all, it's pretty fun - I didn't bother getting all the way to the end (playing on easy), but surprisingly polished for what I assume was a budget title when it was released.

Oh, there's also a taunt action you can do (separate button press) - but I'm not sure what role it plays? THe manual says it covers your opponents screen for a split second, but I didn't notice that when taunts were used against me...and I didn't notice any effect when I used them against my opponents. A taunt basically plays an audio line from the movie, but as far as I could tell there's only one line per character so it gets old pretty fast. Perhaps the taunts only work when playing multiplayer? (again, surprised the game has this feature given what i imagine was its low budget).

Perhaps most impressive was that I looked at the credits (in the manual, not the ones in the game) and the game was made by what looks like a team of ten people (not including audio/music)! There are 5 artists credited, two programmers (one is the director of programming and the other is lead) a designer and a producer. There are 4 more people listed, but those seem like executive roles/titles rather than production (CEO, VP of biz dev, finance director and director of art design). I guess the last one might count as an artist on the team?

Still, this is pretty impressive I think for a title released in 2006. (makes me think of the size of our student teams and what they can/could accomplish)


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria