Sega Swirl
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
Well, this game came out for free with Issue 4 of the
Official Sega Dreamcast Magaziene demo disc. (And just about
all the other issues following it) It's a puzzler where you
form chain reactions with certain colors of swirls. the more
you pull off the higher the score you get. Will this
freebie, be worth the developing dollars, or end up being
wasted money which could've been used to develop another
Sonic game? Let's get onto the review and find out.
Graphics
The graphics look all right, but nothing spectacular for the
Dreamcast. You got the all the swirls in a nice variety of
colors, but I'm sure the SNES can pull off the visuals just
as good too. Oh, well, you do got some easy to navigate
menus on the screen, the options are in polygons with simple
lettering. The in game graphics are simple, you got a Tetris
like drop box, filled with swirls, and a menu on the right
letting you know your level goals, and scores, all the
action is fit nicely on a 4 multi player screen, and moves
at a fast rate. The opening game loading time is really a
downer, as it takes about 20-30 whole seconds to load this
'game. ' But nothing is a really bad about the graphics
except how simple they are, but hey it's free, so what can
you expect?
Sound
Well, you got this alright background music which sounds
like it came from an old Charlie Brown special, and you get
really neat sound effects when you pull off chains of
swirls, the more swirls you pull off in a chain, the wackier
the sound you get, like balloons popping, or a weird cheer
for example, (in the PC version it's worse, just only one
simple sound for completing all chains of swirls) but that's
about it for sound, nothing much good or bad to say about it.
Game play
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the review, you got a
playing field/drop box like in most other puzzlers (Tetris,
Columns, etc.) filled with a whole bunch of randomly colored
swirls. By moving the cursor over a certain color it'll highlight
all the other swirls that'll form the chain reaction by pressing
the A button. The more swirls you pull off in a chain reaction,
the higher the score you get. If you only press A and there's
only just 1 swirl in the whole chain of swirls, then you'll lose
points. There are a variety of ways to play. There's 2 types of
single player modes, Single Challenge, and Level Challenge,
One is just a free play where you can set a time limit to see
how high of a score you can get (which you can save on a VMU
and post on the Internet through your Dreamcast Web Browser),
or go for a unlimited amount of time. In Level Challenge mode
you got to meet a certain score for several different categories
(called goals in the game, like performing a certain number chain
combo, or low time, etc.) to go onto the next level, to make it
even more challenging you got the option to set a time limit too.
Replay Value
Up to four players can play in a split screen challenge, where
four players play on four separate screens at once where the
player who scores 5000 points first wins, and also, there's
another type of game which alternating is involved, where all
four players play on the same playing field (Much like the co-operative
mode in the Tengen NES version of Tetris, read my review for that
game if you don't know what I'm talking about.). There's also an
e-mail challenge to where you take ages to complete a game (But
it takes forever to complete like all those other email games like
E-mail Chess). All these extra options boost up the replay value a lot!
In Brief
+: Fun, addictive Concept, Up to 4 players can play
simultaneously, a great freebie
-: Really simple graphics and sound, this might not appeal
to most gamers
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 6. 3
Sound: 5. 9
Game play: 8. 7
Replay Value: 8. 2
Overall: 7. 2 out of 10
Comments
A fun, unique, puzzler by Sega, simple at first, but like most
puzzlers it gets addicting after a while, and it's a lot of fun too
if you grab friends for a multi player frenzy. If you subscribe to
the Official Dreamcast mag, you already got this game coming to
you because it's on just about every demo disc with the magazine,
and it is also included for free with all Dreamcast systems too, if
you still don't have it you than pick it up at the newsstand for just
$8, or call Sega and they will just mail you a copy for free. So it's
a good buy either way.
OR
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