Mad blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles

Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles – Review

Published By: Open Emotion Studios, Developed By: Open Emotion Studios, Genre: Puzzle, Release Date:  April 19, 2011, Rating: E, Systems: Playstation Portable, Playstation 3 (Minis).

Presentation - The opening of Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles starts off with weird addicting  music that still rings in my head. Don’t worry this puzzle game isn’t about music but instead falling blocks that you have to manipulate to pull off four of the exact same color. If your thinking Tetris your sorta close. Mad Blocker Alpha is broken down into three main gameodes including Story Mode, Endless Mode and Tower Mode. Each mode offers a unique form of gameplay and replayability. When analyzing this puzzle game’s entire presentation it holds firm. The gameplay is tried and true. The various gamemodes adds replayability. The sound design solid and the visuals good. The menus are easily navigable and straightforward.

Story – The story portion of Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles is explained in the game’s Story Mode (makes sense).  The story is about Fluzzles who are small furry peaceful creatures who love shape morphing. Their homeworld is called Machu Popyu. One day the evil Mokes invaded Machu Popyu and started polluting the world. Fluzzles had enough of that and hence the name of the game “Revenge of the Fluzzles”.

Visuals – The cutscenes featured nice art design that looked like a water painting. Everything looked hand-drawn. The actual game isn’t anything special to look at. If you seen any drop block puzzle game you seen them all. I must say for a Playstation Portable game it looks decent and runs at a nice framerate.

Sound – The opening menu music was some of the oddest music i ever heard and also nearly impossible to get out of my head. The music changes depending on which gameode you are playing (some better than others). The in-game sound design always kept my mind on gameplay which was important. Overall pretty good sound design for Mad Blocker Alpha.

Gameplay – The first gamemode i played for this puzzle game was Story Mode. The World map that you must travel is filled with challenges. Each section of the World map has areas where you must play a game and complete specific objectives tied to Mad Blocker Alpha’s story. For instance you might have to reach a score of 5000 pts in a certain amount time. Some objectives are easy while others more difficult as you traverse the map’s winding paths. I thought the Story mode would be fun but it wasn’t. However the next two modes were.

Endless Mode is just that, an endless mode. Your goal here is to survive as long as possible and get as many points before you die. Endless Mode is methodical. It takes  a long time to die but that is the fun part. You start out with blocks falling slow then over time the blocks fall faster and faster and that is when the difficulty arrives. You can play one game of Endless Mode for an half-hour easily. Its addicting and fun and chews up time.

Tower Mode i thought was going to be difficult so i choose Beginner difficulty. Which in turn made it too easy. Your goal here is to build a tower of blocks as high as possible to stay above a red line that moves up slowly. The blocks can explode in this gamemode as well so you have to be extra fast and smart in linking four of the same color blocks. Tower Mode was hands-down the most anxiety inducing gameode in Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles.

Replayability – Its a puzzle game which means it can last a long time. You can change difficulty for each gamemode making them all unique. You can spend many hours playing Endless Mode alone. The gameplay is good and quite addicting. This game does have some replayability.

Final Verdict – Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles is a good puzzle game for your Minis collection. It harpens back to classics like Tetris which is a good thing. The content is also good. Thanks for reading.

7.5/10