Review by WhiteX
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Date: 2006-06-12
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Magnetica

Description

Magnetica is a puzzler based on the same school of the game called Zuma,
where you want to make combos of same colored balls on a a circling trail
by shooting balls in the middle.

Presentation/graphics 5

The graphics do their job, i mean, it is a 2d puzzler, nothing more.

The balls are vibrant and multicolored and very well "animated" as they roll
through a "Dreamcast swirl" type of trail and similar ones, the backgrouns are
almost all of them silver to give the impression of metal, no story, no cutscenes like Meteos and no different ball design.

Music/sound effects 7

The Music is some futuristic beat, kinda Megaman-ish like, fits the metallic set up
and is easy to forget, that in case of a puzzler is a good thing.

The sound effects are like the graphics, fitting, but nothing to go Yee-haw! about.

Gameplay 8

Here´s the meat of the game, you see, you must shoot the ball from the middle with the stylus
to meet other balls with the same color as they roll towards the center, when you succeed on
pairing it up with two others, they disappear and if the the balls surrounding the ones that vanished are
same coloured, they get atracted to each other forming combos.

The stylus control is precise and fast, although only on challenge mode you can select a left handed mode,
much to my demise, being a lefty myself.
As all puzzlers, it gets hard really fast but it is fun nonetheless.

DS factor 6

It utilizes the touchscreen for everything, however, no other "DS only" capabilities are used and the
upper screen is nothing but a score keeper, well, it is nice for a clean battlefield though.

Learning curve 7

A moment to learn, a lifetime to dominate...Seriously, you´ll be playing in seconds because it is very intuitive, however, on puzzle mode you will bang your head a little bit.

Lasting appeal/game modes 9

As all puzzlers, you may want to play it once in a while and it never gets old on small sessions
of gameplay.

There´s the almost endless challenge mode, the puzzle mode, that gives you a set number and color of balls to kill
a built scenario and the quest mode that place you against more variations of the trail design and has a stage like progresion.

Final considerations

Nice game, although not as good as Meteos, i recommend to rent it first.

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