Jelly Belly: Ballistic Beans! (Nintendo DS) - Review by Chris

Introduction

Games which carry product licenses aren't an uncommon sight in today's market with the manufacturers of various products outside the games industry hoping to expand their audience and increase the number of people buying their products. What better way to do this to do this than create a game carrying the products name. Yet, having a license behind it doesn't guarantee a quality title but luckily the use of the Jelly Belly license in the form of a puzzle game, brought to you courtesy of Zoo Digital, just about makes it worth the cost.

Gameplay

Jelly Belly Ballistic Beans takes the simple premise set out in the likes of Breakout and puts a twist on the concept. Block breaking is still a predominant feature in this title, just as it was in that one, yet it's not the main focus of the title. Instead, the breaking of blocks will only aid you in clearing a path so that you can complete the stages objectives, with each stage comprising 3 objectives that have to be completed to progress. Stage objectives include placing three of your beans in the vortexes situated throughout the current stage, where you might be asked to fill these with one specific colour or simply any adding an extra layer to the gameplay, collecting a pair of letters on each stage with the letters coming together after a set of 5 stages to produce the words 'Jelly Belly' or beating a high score. Depending on how many of the objectives you complete in the level, you'll receive a medal grading for your efforts with some of the game's copious amounts of levels only becoming unlocked with the gold medal grades. These objectives are never forced on the player and feel like a natural part of the gameplay as they are simply things one would do anyway if the objectives weren't even there.

The game comprises of 5 modes in total, 4 of which are virtually the same in terms of what is that is asked of you, which is to complete the 3 main objectives as quickly as possible before moving on to the next stage, while the fifth option revolves around the idea of collecting as many beans as possible in the time limit, again these being graded in accordance with specific limits that the game wants you to meet. The gameplay you'll undertake across the collection 160 levels, which are unlocked progressively as you play through them in each of the modes, has you using the Jelly Belly cannon at the base of the touch screen to launch beans onto the stage and work your way to the completion of the objectives. The best comparison which can be made in relation to the gameplay is that it is akin to that seen in any pinball title except here the balls aren't round and as a result the game forces you to change your playing style to accommodate for this due to the physics of the beans being completely different to that of a pinball.

As a result, you'll find yourself losing a lot of your beans at the beginning as you get used to the change in gameplay, but you'll soon learn to line up your cannon with the fall of the bean so as to catch it and reuse it. As has been mentioned, there are around 160 levels to play through yet apart from a slight change in aesthetic, they all play very similar to one another as blocks are shared between stages and mere pattern changes occur over the majority. The game does provide some limited multiplayer options, letting you play these 5 modes from a single console where one player takes and turn and then hands the console to the second player. It's a nice idea that will make the experience more sociable but it just feels like a cop out when true multiplayer could have been included and would have been much more fun.

Controls

You are given a choice of whether you want to use the touch screen for controlling the game or using the d-pad and the buttons. The touch screen controls work better, after a couple of minutes getting to grips with how to catapult the beans which requires you to slide the stylus across the screen in the desired direction and then let go, in comparison to the more traditional layout, which feels very slow to react to your inputs. The use of the stylus just makes things much more responsive to your input yet it too has some issues. All too often it was found that the touch screen would stop detecting the input on the touch screen meaning you'd have to scramble to the d-pad to get things moving again. It's a strange issue that resolved itself once the d-pad had been touched but can definitely get in the way of the gameplay.

Graphics

Ballistic Beans incorporates a very colourful, 2d aesthetic that looks great when viewed on the DS' screens. While there have certainly been better and more prolific games to push the boundaries of 2d on the console, the game manages to keep its own with a clean cut design and some beautifully created backgrounds. The foreground images, these being the blocks, bean catapult and the strips at the side which hold the beans and a power-up gradient, don't quite match the same quality of the backgrounds, looking slightly rough around the edges. The backgrounds cover a variety of themes, from Space to Party to Halloween, and they all look great. The game does have a tendency, though, to drop in frame rate when things get raucous with the bean bouncing off and destroying blocks due to the physics employed on the beans.

Sound

The music that you get here isn't of the best order, with it doing nothing more than providing a backdrop for you to play upon. It never really fits with the themes of the stages and as a result, it's entirely forgettable to the point where the more you play, the less you'll even notice it at all. The sound effects of the beans bouncing off of the objects in the stages are very much the staple that are too be expected for this type of 'pinball' game but they do become rather irritating.

Dual screen

The game stretches across both screens, with you having to clear blocks, collect letters and other things on both screens. It makes good use then of the verticality of the two screens together but because they aren't joined, there is a margin between the two where you can't see what is happening. It's an issue that has always plagued DS games and while others have minimised it, it's still annoying. It is something you can work around here though.

Final comments

Jelly Belly Ballistic Beans on the DS is an interesting puzzle game that fits into a gap in the market where there were few comparable titles. Yet while it easily fills the gap with considerable ease and with plenty of content to play through, it ultimately feels shallow in comparison to many of the other puzzle titles on the market as there's no real feeling of excitement. It's an interesting concept but tying it to a license shows it nothing more than an attempt to cash-in on potential new customers. It's good but doesn't match up to the competition.

Pro: Plenty of levels to work your way through, background artwork looks great
Con: Little in the way of variation between the modes, multiplayer options are limited to sharing the one console
Final score: 5.2

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