Atlantis Sky Patrol

Let's see, if you combine my love for classic arcade shooters, marbles and some good 'ole fashion puzzler action, you'd get Atlantis Sky Patrol. I've must have spent a whole week playing the game and found it pretty addicting. The game marries all the good things about marble popping in an easy to play package. The degree of difficulty ramps up at just the right pace but after a while things begin to get a bit repetitive which is why I stopped playing halfway through.

You play a pilot charged with the duty of regaining control of strategic bases around the world . The game follows a preset linear path so you don't actually pick which base you want to attack. You just steadily advance to the next base as you successfully complete each stage. There are over 100 stages to beat and in between are short mini games and ship upgrades but more on those later.

Your goal is simple. You have different colored marbles that roll single file towards the exit. Your ship is equipped with a laser that launches randomly assigned colored marbles towards them. Connect three of the same colored marbles together and they explode shortening the line. Miss and you've added a new marble to the line. The faster you can do this the better because in later stages you'll have to deal with multiple lines. Your ship can only move side to side so aiming at a moving line that's constantly changing direction definitely requires some eye-hand coordination. Needless to say the game demands speed and accuracy in order to beat it. To prevent new lines from forming, you have to pop strategically placed marbles around the stage. In the beginning this is almost preschool easy but the later stages place them in hard to reach areas. By stage 50 I caught myself cursing at the game believing it was actively cheating. Yes, I'm quite violent when I game.

To keep things interesting there's a silver marble you have to keep an eye on. As the line approaches the exit, it pushes the silver marble back because this silver marble determines how many coins you get when you complete the stage. The farther away it is from the exit, the more coins you get. Coins are important because they let you buy ship upgrades necessary to complete later stages. The upgrades themselves are generic; speed, power and accuracy but at least it's something different from the repetitiveness of marble popping.

Repetitiveness is the only real problem I found with the game. Although every stage looks completely different (kudos to the developers for that), I found myself itching to do something else with my ship. There is a mini game in between stages that takes you away from the marble popping madness but of course the purpose of those mini games are to collect more coins to buy more upgrades so you can pop more marbles!

Don't get me wrong, Atlantis Sky Patrol is a very fun addictive game but I usually like my addictions hard to break. This is where the game fails. There's not enough to keep you coming back. It's a total casual game which is fine. The art deco-ish graphics are bright and crisp. The music is fun and controls are responsive. All in all the game makes the perfect work diversion but would probably play better on a portable system like the PSP or DS. It's very similar to the bazillion other marble popping games out there so if you're like me and just can't get enough then give this game a go.