Sparkle 2 (Xbox One) - Review

Sparkle 2 is available from the 27th January on the Xbox One and is priced at £6.39. There will be a 15% discount at launch.

I reviewed their first Xbox One offering, Sparkle Unleashed back when that was released and really enjoyed it. There was just something about its simplicity that made it so much fun. In fact until I received Sparkle 2 I was still playing Unleashed regularly, trying to complete it on hard.

Now there were some things that bugged me about Unleashed, more so the longer I've had the game. The chains around the ball once you got to the more difficult levels were infuriating and seemed like a really forced in way to extend the game. Other niggles that I had at the beginning disappeared the longer I played it, such as the shooter that was on rails along the bottom of the screen rather than rotating from one position. At first this really riled me, but after playing the game for awhile you soon get used to it. So much so that moving from this to Sparkle 2 took some getting used to as Sparkle 2 makes use of a rotating shooter, making it much more like my personal Xbox 360 favourite Zuma.

I remember writing in my review of Unleashed that it could borrow more from Zuma - the rotating shooter being the main thing. Sparkle 2 definitely feels more like a Zuma clone, and I don't mean that negatively - it just feels more polished than its predecessor. They have removed those annoying chained balls and it has made the game infinitely more fun. There are new power ups too which are fun to play around with. You can also add power ups to four points on your shooter which is another great addition. In short they have taken everything I liked about Sparkle Unleashed and improved upon it. This game is easy to pick up, difficult to master and even harder to put down. I did fifty levels in one sitting and completed it in three - in fact such are the levels of my addiction that after completing it I immediately picked the highest difficulty and restarted it. Achievements in this game are generous and not all that difficult, at least if you enjoy the game. They're basically just for playing the game and the different modes available.

At £6.39 I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who just wants a fun game to play. It really is so addictive and seeing a big chain come together is still so satisfying. Grab it when it releases guys!

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Sparkle Unleashed (Xbox One) - Review

Sparkle Unleashed is out now on Xbox One and is priced at £6.39 (random?!) with a 20% discount available for Gold members. There's an Austin Powers joke in there somewhere...

Anyway, Sparkle Unleashed is a match 3 ball-shooting puzzle game akin to the likes of Zuma on the previous gen. Now I have a little secret to share with you...Zuma was my ultimate guilty pleasure on the last gen. I spent (read wasted) many an hour on the ball-busting games Zuma and Zuma's Revenge!, much to my partners disgust. So when I first saw Sparkle Unleashed I have to admit I got quite excited.

Sparkle Unleashed sees you control a little catapult that can move left to right along the bottom of the screen, unlike Zuma's stationary but twirl-able catapult. I did really struggle with this at first due to many areas of the map being unreachable if you have a snake longer than 5 balls, but I suppose that's the challenge of the game. The catapult holds two balls, which you can switch between by tapping 'B'. The mechanics and the general jist of the game are pretty standard fare for this type of game.

But Sparkle Unleashed tacks on a 'story' of kind. To be honest this isn't what I play this type of game for, so in the brief moments of unskippable one-line narrative I found myself reaching for my phone and checking on Twitter, so I can't really comment on it. Well I suppose it didn't seem that interesting. From what I can gather though you're on a quest to somewhere for something. Yeah, sorry. So you make your way through a forest and every few stages come to a brazier, which gives you a magic key. These magic keys unlock powers such as Orbs that change the colour within the blast zone, and my personal favourite, a tribe of purple butterflies that eat the balls that are closer to the hole.

Sparkle Unleashed gives the Xbox One a polished ball-shooting puzzle game that has definite longevity. I am currently completely stuck on Stage 107. It looks like I am close to the end of my quest but a quick look at the achievements shows that there are two more difficulty levels. There are also lots of Challenge levels. So for little more than a fiver (if you're a Gold member) I feel like you get a lot of game for your money. Yes it's the same thing over and over, but the same can be said of an FPS really. It's graphics do cheapen the game a little, but the game IS cheap, so I don't feel too upset by this. I'd say if you're looking for a game that's easy to pick up but difficult to master then you could do much worse than pick this game up.

8/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

PS. Upon re-reading this review, I now realise how many times I mention balls. And holes. I did try to think of ways to reword, but let's be honest that would be ridiculous. If, like me, you giggled a little reading the 'eat the balls that are closer to the hole' line then congratulations. You and I clearly never matured past high school! :)