Game Review of Zuma's Revenge

The main objective in Zuma's Revenge! is to clear sets of rolling balls by matching three or more of the same colour. The player achieves this by controlling overly-energetic if not mildly spastic-looking frog who spits multi-coloured balls. The frog must shoot these balls towards the incoming balls rolling onto the screen. These balls are cleared from the screen when three or more are matched together in a row.

The player can score extra points by shooting through newly-formed gaps between the balls when matches are cleared. Fruit bonuses appear occasionally which can be hit for extra points if the player can manage to shoot a ball between these gaps. The gaps are closed if balls at both ends are the same colour. This can lead to chain reaction ball clearing that result in additional points.

There are plenty of little extras to add to the mix. The fruit bonuses not only give you additional points, they also help slow down the incoming balls. Some of the incoming balls contain various power-ups that can help you clear the current level much easier. A slow power-up exists to make the balls roll much slower than normal. A laser sight helps improve your aim's accuracy. Tri-shot power-ups give the frog a shotgun-like blast. Laser power-ups let you destroy single ball. Bomb power-ups take out multiple balls in one go. The lightning power-up is probably the best one in the game, as it is capable of eliminating all balls on the screen of one colour.

The incoming balls continue to roll along the game level's track towards a skull emblem located at the end of the track. If the incoming balls reach the skull emblem, it's all over for the frog, as the skull will become animated and eat the little bugger. Clearing all the balls before they reach the skull lets you proceed to the next level. In the game's standard Adventure mode, some big kahuna-looking dude gives you hints along the way each time you complete a level. He also awards you with a checkpoint every five completed stages. If you lose all of your lives, you can restart at the checkpoint instead of from the very beginning.

At the end of each island area, the player confronts a Tiki god as the area's boss battle. Killing these bosses is corny but hilarious, as they always have something cheesy to say that is bound to make players chuckly. Take the first boss for example. Defeating him will cause him to say, "You broke my tongue like ‘clahhhh!'". Who would ever have thought that Tiki gods knew how to speak valley girl?

Zuma's Revenge brings a few new things to the table, like new levels that operate a bit differently from the original. There is a "leaping lilies" stage in which the player must make the frog jump between lily pads in order to reach all the balls on the screen. Other new stages have the frog move along a horizontal or vertical track as opposed to the original stages which kept the frog rotating in one fixed position. After the player clears a certain amount of levels in Adventure mode, he or she is allowed to access the game's additional modes of play.

Overall, Zuma's Revenge! will prove to be a hit with Zuma lovers and puzzle game lovers alike. It has great sound, excellent graphics, funny anecdotes, and a pleasant tropical theme. It is silly but not completely mindless.

Zuma's Revenge! is suited for all audiences and available via download and in stores. It has been released for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.