The folks behind Bookworm also make lots of games that are fairly obviously clones of other games. And, while I would prefer that companies take chances and make games based on new ideas, I can appreciate the need to create a game that folks might already be familiar with to bolster sales. Making games is a business, after all.
Zuma is a pretty apparent copy of Puzz Loop, even to an untrained eye. But, since I don’t have any experience playing Puzz Loop, I guess my experience with Zuma will have to do.
Zuma has you taking control of this stone frog-thing at the end of a circuitous track that begins somewhere offscreen. A line of marbles comes down this track toward the frog, and if they collide with it, it’s game over. But, the frog also has the ability to shoot more marbles at the ones coming down the track. By matching enough of the same color they disappear, and if you make them all disappear, then you win the level and get to move on to the next, where everything moves a little faster.
I only played this game a couple of times on someone else’s dime and I really wasn’t all that impressed by it. It might be because the game starts out so slow and takes a ridiculous amount of time to get to the Good Stuff(tm). Or it might be that I didn’t think that the XBox 360 controller was particularly well-suited to play a game like this (a paddle controller would be awesome). But I really think I didn’t get a lot of mileage out of this game because it never ‘clicked’ with me. Lots of puzzle games are simple, but they have to tickle that special part of my brain that makes repetitive motions fun, and this one didn’t quite reach it.
[...] Whenever I play most of the games by Popcap, oftentimes I can’t help but think that I’ve ‘been there, done that’. [...]