 Volleyball can be described as a highly original game that is really fun to play. This is the first version of volleyball that I have seen and SimbSoft did a very good job with it. The company seems to have other great games, which will be reviewed on PPCPathways in the near future, but they are not well known about. Everything in the game is very well designed and thought out.
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From the very beginning, this game is very addicting and fun to play. The AI in the game for the computer is simply incredible and it is the best I have seen. The computer actually does make mistakes! Most games that have a computer will either be way too hard or way too easy. You never know if the computer will complete a move accurately or move to the wrong area and lose the point. The computer can play as three types: Easy, medium, and difficult. Each mode is unique and is described very well in the name of the mode. You are playing as a bubble shaped mini character which is a great device for playing through because they are small, colorful, and they can jump. You will also have the ability to easily switch to landscape with a few taps on the screen and you can do this while playing a game! You don't have to stop your current game to switch orientation. To switch the orientation, tap on the picture of the handheld device in the top right of the screen.
The physics are also very realistic. The little jelly characters have limits on how fast they can move and how high they can jump. The ball moves very realistically and smoothly across the screen. There is only one background in the game, but this doesn't bother me since the essence of the game is its wonderful and unique game play. The only audio contained is simple ball hits and a whistle when the ball switches sides of a point is scored. Scoring is very simple and is taken care of completely by the game. While playing on my iPAQ HX4700, I could not stop admiring how smooth everything looks! The rendering of the game looks very good and I have no complaints.
There are two modes that you can play in: classic, where you will play to 15 points total, and official, where you will play to 25 points. Also, the game includes full instructions that can be viewed from inside the game, which I think is a very important feature. A multiplayer mode is also included in which one player will use the stylus on the screen and the second will use the hardware buttons but on my HX4700, this was impossible because there is a delay between pushing a button or touching the touchpad and when it will show the action. This problem may be able to be fixed through software, but I am unaware of a solution. A more practical and really cool multiplayer mode would be over IR or Bluetooth but I can't blame the maker because I can see a lot of problems with these. For example, if the network had latency problems or lost the connection, there could be a lot of problems. Even though it could be problematic and difficult to implement a multiplayer mode that would allow the use of two pocketpc's, that is the one feature I would love to see added.
Overall, this is one of my favorite games. The game play is very addicting and it is very easy to learn but can take practice to master the technique. Since the ball only moves in a 2-D left and right direction, it is easier to play than if it was full 3-D and I'm not even sure how you would control the ball in the third dimension. I highly recommend trying the demo and feel free to post how it runs on your device in the message board below. Don't forget to check back to PPCPathways in a short while because we will be reviewing other SimbSoft games. Our list of products to review is very long and if you would like SimbSoft games to be moved up on the list, please contact us and we will move their games up. More information |
