I know what you're thinking. "What the hell is a Madball?" Then you see the picture and think, "Oh yeah, I've got one of those somewhere in the closet!" Yup, pretty much the same thing went through our heads, too. Madballs are those ugly (but cool), personality infused bouncy balls that started showing up around 1985. We all played with one at some point, and probably cringed shortly afterward. Well, recently they've been going through a revival of sorts, and to top it off we've got a game to compliment it. Now, before you set off the "OMG Marketing tie-in game! Stay away!" alarm in your head, take a minute to read the impressions. You might be surprised.

Fundamentally, Madballs is an arena based third person shooter that's welcoming enough for anyone to get into, but has tons of depth for more experienced gamers. Its the sequel to the 2007 freeware PC/Linux title Babo Violent 2, which was essentially a top-down style shooter similar to Crimsonland with a little Quake 3 mixed in. Or, for another comparison, Madballs is like the [awesome] blood-soaked spiritual successor to Faceball 2000, if you get the reference. In Madballs, you've got the familiar (and ugly as hell...but in a charming way) little darlings roaming around top down multiplayer maps with heavy artillery. There's dual analog control, but you don't have to worry about vertical aiming. You just line up the shots arcade style and blast away with the triggers.



Primarily, its a third-person shooter as most will probably choose to play from that view point, but a top-down view is also included for those who want to kick it old-school. There's 12 different Madballs characters to choose from, and each has different attributes. But if you aren't a Madballs fan, there's a mode where you can throw your Avatar into the mix and blast the hell out of them. Pretty entertaining. More interesting, is that each Madball is also more or less resistant to different weapons (Mega Man style) so there's an extra level of strategy rather than just brainlessly holding down the fire button. The combat is remarkable deep and feature laden with around 50 unlockables in total, but its said you can rack them all up within a few hours of gameplay.



Multiplayer is 16-player, and you've also got up to 4-player co-op through a ten level campaign. The map designs are pretty varied, and you've got 21 to choose from, but should that not be enough, the game will include a tile based map editor (dubbed "Invasion Mode"). You can build your own maps (with 200 pieces to choose from), or instead go online and before each match have each player take turns adding in a piece of the overall map until you've filled all the slots for an original map.

This is not a marketing tie-in game, contrary to initial knee-jerk reactions. In fact, PlayBrains is actually paying for the rights to use the characters. They were added later in development simply because it was a cool idea. Frankly, we agree. The Madballs characters add in a degree of personality that might otherwise have been missing. The whole engine was custom developed and spent two years in the cooker, and after seeing what all the game can do, you pretty quickly realize that a lot of work went into this little game. Madballs is scheduled for release this Summer for either 800 or 1200 points (undecided) and should prove the have online legs far beyond its release.