

8/27/95
Ballz: The Director's Cut, by PF. Magic/ Panasonic Software
3DO version, 1-2 players.
PF.Magic is a company with rather strange tastes. From their first 3DO title, the innovative Pataank!, to their upcoming software titles, PF continually displays a taste that dangles the highwire dangerously above the theater of the absurd. And (generally) I mean that as a good thing.
	Ballz was originally released to positive reviews and rather lackluster sales on the 16 bit console systems quite some time ago. The game brought some much needed humor, originality and spunk to a 16 bit genre deeply into overkill. Now in its special "Director's Cut" version, only for 3DO, Ballz brings a much needed new fighting game to the system. 
	Ballz is unusual in the fighting game arena in virtually every respect. Aside from the obvious peculiarity that all the characters are made from balls of various sizes, the game is played on a 3D plane. In Ballz, you can move into and out of the standard side scrolling perspective that most fighters are stuck in at will. Your character gets smaller as he (or she) moves further back into the screen and gets larger as they move closer to you. You can even have them rotate around the arena. It's a very neat feature for a fighting game and fun to experiment with, but does tend to lead to some control difficulties at times.
	Graphically, Ballz is outstanding. The backgrounds are all 3D rendered and the balls that make up the characters are sharply defined and smooth. Animation is very slick for the most part (frames, at times, seem a little jerky, but not by much) and the character motions are extremely realistic, smooth and involving. Considering the fact that all the characters are made from spheroids, the level of graphic detail that the 3DO allows them is incredible. 
	There's not much to complain about the game's visual presentation. It would have been better if the floors had been textured instead of just their solid, almost liquid-like, single color look. The floors look very plain, but technically real texturing might have wrecked havoc on the 3D programming. Better monotone floors than blocky textures, I guess. It's also too bad that you can't actually get close to the background scenes and fight in or near them. That would have been a really original twist that could have made for even more entertaining brawling.
	Sonically, Ballz is very good as well. From the rude, rather suggestive theme song to the grunts, groans, begging and thumps of the fight, Ballz is consistently entertaining to listen to. Of course, since this is a CD, I have to wonder why PF.Magic didn't add the voice of the Jester into the game. As with the 16 bit versions, his comments (and a lot more, hence the "Director's Cut" part) are displayed on the video screens that make up a large portion of the background, but you never hear him. Even when you actually fight and beat him, he never makes anything more than a laugh and a groan now and then. Equally unfortunate is the game's rather lousy ending sequence (Again, this is a CD game. PF.Magic could have done something really cool and didn't).
	Being a fighting game, Ballz prescribes itself to the standard fighting game control formula with various kicks, punches and neat special moves all used to pound your opponent into submission. Ballz is a one punch/ one kick button fighter, which was initially rather disappointing. Fortunately, it doesn't hurt the game's playability, control or sheer bulk of moves as one would think. There are characters with upwards of fifteen special moves alone. Each character has about four different punches and four different kicks to use (pressing punch and down would be a low punch, for instance, while just pressing punch by itself would simply initiate a normal blow). Control is responsive, fast paced and easy to learn. Overall, however, Ballz is more mindless bashing than strategy as far as fighters go and a lot of button mashing goes on during the game.
	Ballz main strength lies in the personality of its characters. The fighters in Ballz are incredibly varied, original and actually border on being charming in an odd sort of way. From the whining, vicious ballerina and muscle, fat and rhino armor bound brawlers, to a caveman, super hero, killer clown, zombie and ape, the various characters to master are quite scoping. There are nine instantly playable characters and eight incredibly varied bosses (though four of them are actually the same character in different forms).
	The fighting antics possible include groveling for health, taunting insults for strategic purposes, jumping on your opponent, burying them, busting them apart and all sorts of other nasty, unsportsmanlike manuevers (including the ever painful to watch "Low Blow"). The video billboards in the background send taunts, insults, commentary and animations from the Jester (who controls this electronic tournament) all through the game. Fair warning that some of the moves possible and a lot of the billboard animations and commentary are extremely crude and decidedly directed toward the toilet side of humor.
	Ballz offers three speed levels, though more should have been available for better game tweaking. Also, Ballz is extremely light in other options as well. First off and rather inconceivably, Ballz has only one default difficulty level. You can't adjust the game to an easier or more difficult setting and that's terribly unfortunate. The game allows a choice of between 1 and 6 continues, but not the option of endless continuing. Another oversight is the lack of an option to turn the timer off. Ballz doesn't have any sort of time limit adjustment at all.
	While the 3D movement is easy to get used to, I did encounter a few problems in this part of the game as well. First off, you can actually walk away from your opponent, instead of backing away, which makes it occasionally difficult to block and crouch as your fighter might start walking instead. Also, pressing up and down on the control pad leads your character in that direction, which is very unusual. Jumping is handled by pressing the C button. Pressing the Left and Right shift buttons make the fighter quickly evade in a circular pattern around the screen. The characters also seem to be constantly pulled toward each other for some reason--especially when they are getting farther apart. These complaints are minor however, as control overall is very competent, intuitive and responsive.
	I really enjoyed playing Ballz: The Director's Cut and found the game to be a nicely fresh take on the fighting game genre, especially on the 3DO. Its great graphics and sounds, humor, original characters and solid playability make it a winning game. The 3DO doesn't have nearly enough fighting games (especially brand name titles), which makes Ballz an especially welcome addition to the library. Also, since a polygonal based fighter is a virtual impossibility on the standard 3DO, Ballz is the only 3D fighter we're going to get until M2 comes around. Definitely good stuff all around. 
