PopCap Games may be best known for their sublime Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $2.99 this week!), but they actually produce a number of stellar franchises like Peggle and Zuma. We interviewed PopCap about those two series coming to Windows Phone last year, and we’ll continue to ask about them whenever we can. PopCap seems to work on one game for one platform at a time, and they’ve just completed a new Xbox Live Arcade release: Zuma’s Revenge. It just came out yesterday, but I’ve been playing the game for a week now in order to bring you this review.

The original Zuma Deluxe was an XBLA launch title way back in 2006. Basically an enhanced clone of classic arcade game Puzz Loop (aka Magnetica), the Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. It’s sort of like Bubble Town 2 but much, much better and more varied.

Head past the break for our full impressions and more screenshots.

Island adventure

Zuma’s Revenge enhances the formula with two new types of levels: lily pad and rail levels. Lily pads allow the frog to jump between two different spots at will. This gives players more freedom, but also adds to the challenge since you’ll need to manage both spots effectively. Rail levels let the frog slide up/down or left/right along a rail, firing only at a right angle rather than the usual 360 degrees. The frog slides a bit too fast for my tastes, but I still enjoyed the diversion.

Adventure Mode starts out with an amusing 360-exclusive intro depicting the heroic, unnamed frog’s journey 2 a mysterious island. He’ll need to explore all six regions of the island, each consisting of 10 levels and a boss battle. These bosses have their own unique abilities, such as shields that can only be penetrated with Bomb power-ups or guardian idols who must be knocked out before you can get a hit in. They also crack a few jokes before and after battle, bolstering the lighthearted atmosphere.

The original XBLA Zuma was a fun but overly challenging game with several nigh impossible Achievements (I only got 70 GamerScore from it). Thankfully Zuma’s Revenge is far more approachable and fair to players. First off, you only need to beat one Adventure Mode level at a time instead of five in a row. Individual stages can be replayed at any time for higher scores and better completion times, unlocking special Spirit Badges. As if that didn’t boost replay value enough, the game displays a level’s online leaderboard whenever you select or complete it, greatly enticing me to go after higher scores (seriously, look for EastX).

Party animals

The aforementioned Spirit Badges tie into another of Revenge’s XBLA-exclusive improvements: Spirit Animals! See, one reason the first Zuma was so tough is that when the porting team brought the game from PC to XBLA, they didn’t rebalance the difficulty to accommodate for controllers being less accurate than mice. The higher levels basically expected faster and more precise reactions than most gamers could consistently make.

This time however, you’ll unlock four companion creatures as you play through Adventure Mode. They provide useful score and gameplay modifiers like increasing firing speed or power-up spawn rate. Give the animals Badges and their powers increase; you can even remove the badges from one animal to pump up another or just increase the challenge.

Zuma’s Revenge offers three additional modes on top of its lengthy Adventure. Weekly Challenges ask players to post their best scores on a specific level, whereas Boss Rush is a marathon  of seven boss battles (and its own leaderboard). Iron Frog Mode recalls the steep challenge of the original Zuma, for better or worse. Its 10 levels must be completed in a row without dying. Starting with the sixth level it gets pretty frustrating, even for an experienced Zuma player like yours truly. Still, the associated Achievement will certainly look impressive on a select few gamers’ profiles. Check out my Achievement Guide for more details.

Overall Impressions

PopCap Games shows an amazing ability to produce games that are simple enough for casual audiences and yet vast enough to attract the hardcore crowd. Zuma’s Revenge is no different: the welcoming graphics, absolutely perfect sound effects, and quickly-learnable puzzle mechanics will endear the game to your significant other. Meanwhile, you’ll be busy replaying dozens of stages and multiple modes as you hunt for more Badges and better scores. Simply put, Zuma’s Revenge is one of the best puzzle games I’ve played on any console. Let’s hope PopCap brings us the Windows Phone version we deserve – until then, I’ll be happily blasting balls on the 360.

Zuma’s Revenge costs 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Get it here from the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Paul Acevedo (left) and Ben Ahroni

I made no secret of my love for recent XBLA release Zuma’s Revenge in my review– after all, it’s a PopCap game. Those guys practically always knock it out of the park. As it happens, Casual Connect Seattle featured a panel on the connected experience (gaming on TV, tablet, smartphone: SmartGlass-type stuff).

Who should we find among the panelists but the producer of Zuma’s Revenge, Ben Ahroni. Naturally I snagged him for a video interview. See Ben discuss Zuma, a potential sequel to Plants vs. Zombies, and Windows Phone after the break!

Ben’s move from playing lengthy games to more casual ones echoes a sentiment we heard from many developers over the course of the conference. It seems that as gamers become busier with work and/or family, many gravitate towards games that can be enjoyed in small sessions as opposed to marathon play. The same is certainly true in my case; I’ve been working on Final Fantasy XIII for over a year! No wonder casual gaming has taken off in such a big way.

Does the interview leave you feeling optimistic about future PopCap titles on Windows Phone, dear readers? In the meantime, you can grab Zuma’s Revenge for XBLA here on the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Fun fact: the original Zuma released on Windows Mobile way back in 2009 for a staggering $14.95.

While some of us face the possibility that there might not be a new Xbox Windows Phone game release this week, Nokia owners should have no such complaints. Not only did Nokia and PopCap/EA just publish the vastly improved sequel Bejeweled Live+, two more Nokia Xbox exclusives just popped up! From the license lovers at Electronic Arts comes the board game adaptation Yahtzee, while PopCap has blessed Windows Phone at last with their fast-paced puzzler Zuma’s Revenge.

Dice dice baby

Yahtzee is one of those dice games like Bunko that the elderly set enjoys playing in between trips to the post office and bingo halls. Players and their opponents alternate turns at rolling dice, with the goal of achieving various combinations like 3-of-a-kind or the coveted 5-of-a-kind, formally known as a Yahtzee. Each combination can only be used once during a single game; the game ends when the player exhausts all possible combinations. It might sound a little complicated, but the in-game tutorial will get you rolling dice like your Grandma in no time.

This version of Yahtzee lacks online multiplayer (unlike World Series of Yahtzee, recently released on iOS), though it does support pass-and-play. Thankfully the developers added a fairly robust single-player mode in which players battle against AI opponents in various locals. That said, the AI cheats relentlessly, so expect to repeat many a battle. The overall presentation has a nice charm, though I wish the menus and transitions moved faster.

Nokia’s Yahtzee is a port of Yahtzee Adventures, a game that costs 99 cents on iOS. Like all Nokia Xbox exclusives, this one costs a slightly steeper $2.99. Windows Phone 7 and 8 users can view Yahtzee’s store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Frog fighting

Zuma’s Revenge was not among the games that Nokia and EA formally announced in January 2012, but thanks to EA buying out PopCap, here we are. And I’ve expected Revenge to make it to Windows Phone for quite a while, hence my interviewing the producer at Casual Connect Seattle last year.

Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. Levels in which the frog can hop between lily pads, move along a slider, or battle boastful bosses keep the game fresh and challenging.

The mobile version of Zuma’s Revenge is pretty much a straight port of the PC game, so it unfortunately lacks many of the refinements of the sublime XBLA version (impressions here). Adventure Mode gives players a limited number of lives and they must reach checkpoints every few levels in order to continue when those lives run out. So the Windows Phone game ends up a bit harder than the Xbox 360 version. Beating levels unlocks them for free play in Challenge Mode, at least.

We’ll have a full review of Zuma’s Revenge next week, but fans of the series can buy this one with confidence right now. It’s one of the stronger Nokia exclusives, right up there with Bejeweled Live+ and Flight Control Rocket.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Thanks to Jey Si and TNTjudbud for the tip!

Casual and hardcore (or ‘core’) games often appeal to one group of players while excluding the other. Aiming at just one slice of the gaming audience is well and good, but the holy grail of game development is bridging the gap by appealing to both audiences. Only one game developer has consistently managed to reach that lofty goal: PopCap. Now owned by EA, PopCap has finally returned to Windows Phone (7 and 8) with a port of its accessible yet challenging puzzle masterpiece Zuma’s Revenge.

As a Nokia exclusive, non-Nokia owners will have to wait six months to play Zuma’s Revenge. Read on to find out why it’s worth the wait.

Introducing the world's fastest spitting frog

Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…

If the balls on the edges of the gap created are of a like color (say you made a blue match and the edges now have red balls), the gap will snap shut and possibly create a chain reaction. If they’re not of like color, the gap stays open until the push of advancing balls closes it. During this time, shots can be fired through the gap, and any matches made in that fashion provide a score bonus.

At various intervals throughout a level, fruits will appear in different locations. Much like Pac-Man, collecting a fruit (by shooting it) provides a worthwhile score bonus. Fruits often appear behind the line of oncoming balls, so players will have to scramble to knock out some balls and quickly fire a shot through the gap to get them. Fruits often create cool risk-reward scenarios.

Power-ups also spawn randomly among the incoming line of balls. To collect one, you’ll need to create a match of the same colored balls before it disappears. Power-ups provide beneficial effects like slowing down time, exploding and destroying nearby balls, or rewinding the line of balls for a brief time. There are also a few weapon power-ups for players to manually aim: lasers, triple shots, and a lightning shot that destroys most or all balls of a single color. These can be slightly tough to aim on a touch screen…

Controls

The Zuma games started life as PC titles in which players aim with a mouse pointed. On consoles, less precise analog sticks control the aiming along with the help of a guide line. The Windows Phone version requires players to press and hold in a direction to aim and then release to fire. That’s the only way the game could work, but touch-screen aiming is slower than non-mobile versions and your finger will sometimes block your view.

Like many puzzle games, Zuma’s Revenge allows players to see both the current ball they have to fire and the next ball after that. Unlike most other games, both the current and next ball are actually swappable, enhancing the strategy. In the Windows Phone game, tapping the frog instead of holding him swaps the balls.

I often wished for an on-screen swap button because I tend to press and hold on my frog immediately after each shot. Once you press and hold, you can’t cancel the shot, so swapping becomes impossible at that point. The swapping issue doesn’t hurt the game too much, but a button at the top of the screen would’ve made it a non-issue.

Adventure time

This version offers two game modes: Adventure and Challenge. Adventure consists of a trip across all six regions of Tiki Island. Each region consists of 10 levels, for a total of 60 levels. Boss battles follow each region’s tenth level. You’ll fire at bosses to damage them, but most bosses have their own special mechanics to worry about. One can only be damaged by explosive power-ups, while another won’t get hurt unless you knock his two guard totems out first. These battles make for a fun break from the standard puzzling.

Challenge Mode regions unlock as you progress through the Adventure. Challenge offers the same levels (sans bosses), but they can be selected and replayed at will instead of following a linear progression. The requirements for passing a stage differ by mode too. In Adventure, you have to raise your score enough to fill the Zuma meter, which then causes new balls to stop coming. Challenge Mode stages last three minutes no matter what. To pass, you’ll need to reach a specific score before the timer stops. This makes Challenge stages harder, but at least you can replay them as many times as necessary.

Platform comparisons

Left: A measly local leaderboard. Right: an Adventure mode Checkpoint.

The PC version of Revenge offers three modes: Adventure, Challenge, and Iron Frog. The XBLA version loses Challenge but gains Boss Rush and Weekly Challenges. The mobile version only has the aforementioned two modes, but Iron Frog is too hard to be fun and thus no great loss.

However, the XBLA game (which released after the iOS game on which the Windows Phone port is based) added several substantial improvements beyond new modes. Chief among them is the ability to replay Adventure levels at will, negating the need for a Challenge Mode. The XBLA game also has individual leaderboards for every level and always compares the player’s performance with his or her friends at the end of a level, greatly increasing the game’s competitive aspect and replay value.

Sadly, none of those improvements (which you can read about here) trickled down to Windows Phone and iOS. On the phone, players can’t continue from any Adventure level. Instead, they have to reach checkpoints every five levels and continue from there. It’s strange because the XBLA setup would actually work better on phones since it lets you play for less time while still making progress. Also, the Windows Phone game only has a single Friends leaderboard for all of Adventure. Individual levels and Challenge levels only have lazy local scoreboards instead of online leaderboards.

Achievements

Only two or three of the Achievements here will provide much of a challenge. Adventure Mode will be tough for some players to beat since they have to clear levels 55-60 all in one go. But the Achievement for beating every Challenge level takes time, skill, and a bit of luck. The score goals on some levels are really high. To reach them, I had to replay some levels several times, and I’m a strong player. Practice!

The real Challenge comes from ‘Frozen Frog’ for beating a rail level without moving. In rail levels, the frog slides horizontally or vertically along a rail, depending on where he’s aiming. This Achievement is no big deal on Xbox 360 because the frog starts in the center of the rail and can easily aim straight ahead without budging from his position.

On Windows Phone, he starts at the left-most edge of the level (!) and any nudge will cause him to move. Plus the best level to get this is Adventure 1-5, which means you’ll have to play through four quick levels to even attempt it. I got it after about an hour of trying, but some players probably won’t be able to pull it off.

Overall Impression

Zuma’s Revenge might not be as perfectly polished as the XBLA version, but it’s still one of the very best Windows Phone games. The color-matching gameplay never fails to be fast, challenging, and exciting. PopCap put so much care into the presentation, from the various start-up loading screen jokes to the way a ball spins down into place after being fired. The graphics are sharp and colorful, and the sound effects are as perfect as we’d expect from PopCap. Now that Windows Phone has Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled Live+, and Zuma's Revenge, let's hope PopCap's Peggle isn't far behind.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Three Xbox Live games that were branded as Nokia exclusives for Windows Phone have been made available to all owners of all Windows Phone devices.

Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge, and iBomber Defense, have all been made their way into the Windows Phone Store for general consumption on Windows Phone 7 and 8.

So what are they all about? In our review of Zuma's Revenge, we described the game as thus:

"Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…"

Meanwhile, Bejewelled Live+ should be familiar to most casual gamers. From our review:

"Bejeweled Live+ puts the first Bejeweled Live to shame. It has way more content and yet costs two dollars less, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the original game gets de-listed whenever Live+ becomes available to non-Nokia users. Heck, Live+ even trumps the recently released Bejeweled Live for Windows 8 as well since that one lacks Lightning and Zen modes."

And finally, iBomber Defense is a unique war strategy game for Windows Phone, bringing quite a bit of fun to the mix. Once again, from our review:

"Alright, so iBomber Defense doesn’t run as well as it should and the Achievements are crazy hard and slow to come by. It’s still my favorite traditional tower defense game (in the Xbox WP lineup) though. The graphics and setting are less flashy than geoDefense, but much more visually interesting. Continuing the comparison, turrets in this game always cost the same amount and have the same stats, unlike geoDefense’s crazy variable stats. iBomber provides a smoother and more cohesive experience."

The three games are all published by Electronic Arts, a long-time maker of Xbox games. We haven't seen any formal announcements, but it looks like it could be part of an agreement between EA and Nokia to get these games to a wider audience after a certain amount of time. We've seen other Nokia-exclusive games like the Mirror's Edge, get released later on after a stint of being offered only to Nokia phone owners, so this is certainly not unprecedented.

The trio of games can still be found in the Nokia Collection on your Nokia phone or in the general population of games.

You can get Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge and iBomber Defense in the Windows Phone Store, each for $2.99.

Thanks for the tip, Er. Akshat!

Today, EA has kicked off a rather exciting deal on six of its Xbox Windows Phone titles, currently available on the store. Should you be staring at your Games collection and wondering just what can be added to waste some more of those minutes, look no further. Hop on past the break to find out exactly which games EA has put on sale just for you

It's worth noting that all these games are Xbox Live enabled. That means you'll be able to add some gamerscore to your ID and enjoy a complete experience from a well-established publisher. Without further ado, here are the titles and respective store links:

• The Sims 3 - $3.99 (previously $6.99)
• The Game of Life - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Picnic Wars - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• MONOPOLY - $2.99 (previously $4.99)
• RISK - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Zuma's Revenge - $0.99 (previously $2.99)

The best part about the above deals as not only can Windows Phone 8 owners take advantage of the lowered pricing, but also those who still rock older hardware. It's not known how long these offers will remain active for. Which titles will you be downloading?

via: Windows Phone Italy

A few weeks ago, a bunch of Xbox Windows Phone games (mostly Nokia collection titles) went on sale at once. Nokia, who seems to have organized the sale, also announced that several more games would be discounted in early December.

Those titles (and a few more) are now on sale. We’ve got Contre Jour, Flight Control Rocket, Spy Mouse, Storm in a Teacup, Vampire Rush, and Zuma’s Revenge are all on sale for 99 cents. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, which regularly sells for $4.99, has been marked down to $2.99. All seven games come from Electronic Arts and/or its subsidiaries Chillingo and PopCap.

Head past the break for descriptions and Store links!

Contre Jour (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 33 MB Store Link

We’re still waiting on the Windows 8 version of Contre Jour, but at least we can get the Windows Phone version for cheap in the meantime.

Contre Jour is one of the loveliest Windows Phone games thanks to its effective use of light and silhouette, not to mention the haunting musical score. The goal is to get the tentacled protagonist Petit to each level’s exit while collecting all the lights along the way. Instead of directly controlling Petit, players manipulate the environment by stretching the ground and activating various gadgets.

Technically this is a physics puzzler, but the bold art direction and unique gameplay puts it in a separate league from other genre entries. The difficulty is pretty steep… But if you get stuck, there are guides available online.

Flight Control Rocket (Windows Phone 7 and 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 41 MB Store Link

You’ve probably played the original Flight Control, but perhaps you missed its mostly superior sequel. This one switches things to a retro sci-fi setting in which players must help incoming rockets land on a space-faring mothership safely. You do this by drawing paths from each ship to the appropriate runway, all while trying to avoid collisions.

Not only is FC Rocket way prettier than its forbear, it also offers a lot more gameplay. The three modes each mix the gameplay up in interesting ways, changing up the combo scoring system, bonus rounds, and even mixing in stranded astronauts to rescue. Players can also purchase and equip a variety of robot helpers to customize the gameplay a bit.

The only catch is that FC Rocket’s Achievements are horrendously grindy. The original iOS game allowed users to make IN-App Purchases that would speed them up, but there is no such option on Windows Phone. Still, as I say in our review, if you ignore Achievements this is the best line-drawing game in town.

Spy Mouse (Windows Phone 7 and 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 111 MB Store Link

Spy Mouse's developer Firemint is best known for popularizing the line-drawing genre with Flight Control. In this one, they’ve utilized that line drawing tech to make a stealth game. Players control the titular mouse by drawing a path around each level. He’ll need to grab cheese and reach the level exit without being nabbed by patrolling cats.

Each level has three optional goals such as not being spotted, drawing only one continuous path, and finishing within a certain time limit. Completing every level with those goals completed will net some tasty Achievements.

Storm in a Teacup (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 32 MBStore Link

The game stars a little boy named Storm who hops around in a teacup through fanciful levels dreamed up by his brother Cloud in this touch screen platformer.

Storm in a Teacup is extremely simplistic in the graphics department – the backgrounds don’t even use parallax scrolling, which they sorely need. And yet the frame rate is somewhere in the 10-15 FPS range. It’s like Gameloft’s 3D Windows Phone 8 games, only nothing complex is even going on under the hood. Blame Cobra, whose port of iBomber Defense also runs quite poorly.

Still, if you can tolerate crap graphics and love platformers, you might be able to put up with this one. I’d definitely play Sonic CD and Little Acorns first though.

Vampire Rush (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 99 MBStore Link

In Vampire Rush, players take on the role of Captain Greg, a British swashbuckler. Only Greg can stand between the gates of the city and armies of the undead in this mix of tower defense with hack-and-slash action.

You’ll run around each map, hunting down vampires and their kin on the map and swording them into oblivion. Sometimes they drop gold, which can then be used to build and upgrade turrets or purchase character upgrades. Just don’t let the enemies reach the gate or Greg and the village will meet an untimely demise. Check out our full review for more details.

Vampire Rush features both a campaign mode and survival mode, the latter of which was added in an update. That same update fixed a broken Achievement, but failed to fix another broken one. A-Steroids has told us they would like to get the final Achievement working, but it seems unlikely to happen at this point.

Zuma’s Revenge (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 197 MBStore Link

Zuma’s Revenge put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. Levels in which the frog can hop between lily pads, move along a slider, or battle boastful bosses keep the game fresh and challenging.

The mobile version of Zuma’s Revenge is pretty much a straight port of the PC game. Adventure Mode gives players a limited number of lives and they must reach checkpoints every few levels in order to continue when those lives run out. So the Windows Phone game ends up a bit harder than the Xbox 360 version. Beating levels unlocks them for free play in Challenge Mode, at least.

PopCap pretty much makes nothing but great games (most recently Peggle 2on Xbox One), and Zuma’s Revenge is no exception. Read our full review to learn more.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $2.99 Download size: 113 MBStore Link

Need for Speed: Rivals might be one of the better Xbox One launch games, but not every Need for Speed is a winner. Take the Windows Phone version of Hot Pursuit, for example. Sure, it looks pretty for a Windows Phone 7 game and has the slick menus and licensed music you’d expect from this series. It even lets players choose between controlling a cop or a street racer, just like Rivals.

Presentation isn’t everything though; a game needs to be fun to play. Hot Pursuit starts out fun but gets insanely difficult and grindy before too long. You’ll need to do the same races over and over again in order to unlock the cars needed to compete in higher level events. Even then, some events simply require perfection from the player – not easy or fun given the phone game’s naturally less precise controls. See our review for more proof of frustration.

Get them while they’re hot

Nokia and EA haven’t advertised when this sale will end. Maybe it will last a week, maybe less. If you’re interested in a sale game, better to download them now rather than waiting.

What do you think of this sale selection, dear readers? Did you grab Zuma’s Revenge or any of the other games?

Thanks to Diego Magnani for the tip!

PopCap Games may be best known for their sublime Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $2.99 this week!), but they actually produce a number of stellar franchises like Peggle and Zuma. We interviewed PopCap about those two series coming to Windows Phone last year, and we’ll continue to ask about them whenever we can. PopCap seems to work on one game for one platform at a time, and they’ve just completed a new Xbox Live Arcade release: Zuma’s Revenge. It just came out yesterday, but I’ve been playing the game for a week now in order to bring you this review.

The original Zuma Deluxe was an XBLA launch title way back in 2006. Basically an enhanced clone of classic arcade game Puzz Loop (aka Magnetica), the Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. It’s sort of like Bubble Town 2 but much, much better and more varied.

Head past the break for our full impressions and more screenshots.

Island adventure

Zuma’s Revenge enhances the formula with two new types of levels: lily pad and rail levels. Lily pads allow the frog to jump between two different spots at will. This gives players more freedom, but also adds to the challenge since you’ll need to manage both spots effectively. Rail levels let the frog slide up/down or left/right along a rail, firing only at a right angle rather than the usual 360 degrees. The frog slides a bit too fast for my tastes, but I still enjoyed the diversion.

Adventure Mode starts out with an amusing 360-exclusive intro depicting the heroic, unnamed frog’s journey 2 a mysterious island. He’ll need to explore all six regions of the island, each consisting of 10 levels and a boss battle. These bosses have their own unique abilities, such as shields that can only be penetrated with Bomb power-ups or guardian idols who must be knocked out before you can get a hit in. They also crack a few jokes before and after battle, bolstering the lighthearted atmosphere.

The original XBLA Zuma was a fun but overly challenging game with several nigh impossible Achievements (I only got 70 GamerScore from it). Thankfully Zuma’s Revenge is far more approachable and fair to players. First off, you only need to beat one Adventure Mode level at a time instead of five in a row. Individual stages can be replayed at any time for higher scores and better completion times, unlocking special Spirit Badges. As if that didn’t boost replay value enough, the game displays a level’s online leaderboard whenever you select or complete it, greatly enticing me to go after higher scores (seriously, look for EastX).

Party animals

The aforementioned Spirit Badges tie into another of Revenge’s XBLA-exclusive improvements: Spirit Animals! See, one reason the first Zuma was so tough is that when the porting team brought the game from PC to XBLA, they didn’t rebalance the difficulty to accommodate for controllers being less accurate than mice. The higher levels basically expected faster and more precise reactions than most gamers could consistently make.

This time however, you’ll unlock four companion creatures as you play through Adventure Mode. They provide useful score and gameplay modifiers like increasing firing speed or power-up spawn rate. Give the animals Badges and their powers increase; you can even remove the badges from one animal to pump up another or just increase the challenge.

Zuma’s Revenge offers three additional modes on top of its lengthy Adventure. Weekly Challenges ask players to post their best scores on a specific level, whereas Boss Rush is a marathon  of seven boss battles (and its own leaderboard). Iron Frog Mode recalls the steep challenge of the original Zuma, for better or worse. Its 10 levels must be completed in a row without dying. Starting with the sixth level it gets pretty frustrating, even for an experienced Zuma player like yours truly. Still, the associated Achievement will certainly look impressive on a select few gamers’ profiles. Check out my Achievement Guide for more details.

Overall Impressions

PopCap Games shows an amazing ability to produce games that are simple enough for casual audiences and yet vast enough to attract the hardcore crowd. Zuma’s Revenge is no different: the welcoming graphics, absolutely perfect sound effects, and quickly-learnable puzzle mechanics will endear the game to your significant other. Meanwhile, you’ll be busy replaying dozens of stages and multiple modes as you hunt for more Badges and better scores. Simply put, Zuma’s Revenge is one of the best puzzle games I’ve played on any console. Let’s hope PopCap brings us the Windows Phone version we deserve – until then, I’ll be happily blasting balls on the 360.

Zuma’s Revenge costs 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Get it here from the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Paul Acevedo (left) and Ben Ahroni

I made no secret of my love for recent XBLA release Zuma’s Revenge in my review– after all, it’s a PopCap game. Those guys practically always knock it out of the park. As it happens, Casual Connect Seattle featured a panel on the connected experience (gaming on TV, tablet, smartphone: SmartGlass-type stuff).

Who should we find among the panelists but the producer of Zuma’s Revenge, Ben Ahroni. Naturally I snagged him for a video interview. See Ben discuss Zuma, a potential sequel to Plants vs. Zombies, and Windows Phone after the break!

Ben’s move from playing lengthy games to more casual ones echoes a sentiment we heard from many developers over the course of the conference. It seems that as gamers become busier with work and/or family, many gravitate towards games that can be enjoyed in small sessions as opposed to marathon play. The same is certainly true in my case; I’ve been working on Final Fantasy XIII for over a year! No wonder casual gaming has taken off in such a big way.

Does the interview leave you feeling optimistic about future PopCap titles on Windows Phone, dear readers? In the meantime, you can grab Zuma’s Revenge for XBLA here on the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Fun fact: the original Zuma released on Windows Mobile way back in 2009 for a staggering $14.95.

While some of us face the possibility that there might not be a new Xbox Windows Phone game release this week, Nokia owners should have no such complaints. Not only did Nokia and PopCap/EA just publish the vastly improved sequel Bejeweled Live+, two more Nokia Xbox exclusives just popped up! From the license lovers at Electronic Arts comes the board game adaptation Yahtzee, while PopCap has blessed Windows Phone at last with their fast-paced puzzler Zuma’s Revenge.

Dice dice baby

Yahtzee is one of those dice games like Bunko that the elderly set enjoys playing in between trips to the post office and bingo halls. Players and their opponents alternate turns at rolling dice, with the goal of achieving various combinations like 3-of-a-kind or the coveted 5-of-a-kind, formally known as a Yahtzee. Each combination can only be used once during a single game; the game ends when the player exhausts all possible combinations. It might sound a little complicated, but the in-game tutorial will get you rolling dice like your Grandma in no time.

This version of Yahtzee lacks online multiplayer (unlike World Series of Yahtzee, recently released on iOS), though it does support pass-and-play. Thankfully the developers added a fairly robust single-player mode in which players battle against AI opponents in various locals. That said, the AI cheats relentlessly, so expect to repeat many a battle. The overall presentation has a nice charm, though I wish the menus and transitions moved faster.

Nokia’s Yahtzee is a port of Yahtzee Adventures, a game that costs 99 cents on iOS. Like all Nokia Xbox exclusives, this one costs a slightly steeper $2.99. Windows Phone 7 and 8 users can view Yahtzee’s store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Frog fighting

Zuma’s Revenge was not among the games that Nokia and EA formally announced in January 2012, but thanks to EA buying out PopCap, here we are. And I’ve expected Revenge to make it to Windows Phone for quite a while, hence my interviewing the producer at Casual Connect Seattle last year.

Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. Levels in which the frog can hop between lily pads, move along a slider, or battle boastful bosses keep the game fresh and challenging.

The mobile version of Zuma’s Revenge is pretty much a straight port of the PC game, so it unfortunately lacks many of the refinements of the sublime XBLA version (impressions here). Adventure Mode gives players a limited number of lives and they must reach checkpoints every few levels in order to continue when those lives run out. So the Windows Phone game ends up a bit harder than the Xbox 360 version. Beating levels unlocks them for free play in Challenge Mode, at least.

We’ll have a full review of Zuma’s Revenge next week, but fans of the series can buy this one with confidence right now. It’s one of the stronger Nokia exclusives, right up there with Bejeweled Live+ and Flight Control Rocket.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Thanks to Jey Si and TNTjudbud for the tip!

Casual and hardcore (or ‘core’) games often appeal to one group of players while excluding the other. Aiming at just one slice of the gaming audience is well and good, but the holy grail of game development is bridging the gap by appealing to both audiences. Only one game developer has consistently managed to reach that lofty goal: PopCap. Now owned by EA, PopCap has finally returned to Windows Phone (7 and 8) with a port of its accessible yet challenging puzzle masterpiece Zuma’s Revenge.

As a Nokia exclusive, non-Nokia owners will have to wait six months to play Zuma’s Revenge. Read on to find out why it’s worth the wait.

Introducing the world's fastest spitting frog

Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…

If the balls on the edges of the gap created are of a like color (say you made a blue match and the edges now have red balls), the gap will snap shut and possibly create a chain reaction. If they’re not of like color, the gap stays open until the push of advancing balls closes it. During this time, shots can be fired through the gap, and any matches made in that fashion provide a score bonus.

At various intervals throughout a level, fruits will appear in different locations. Much like Pac-Man, collecting a fruit (by shooting it) provides a worthwhile score bonus. Fruits often appear behind the line of oncoming balls, so players will have to scramble to knock out some balls and quickly fire a shot through the gap to get them. Fruits often create cool risk-reward scenarios.

Power-ups also spawn randomly among the incoming line of balls. To collect one, you’ll need to create a match of the same colored balls before it disappears. Power-ups provide beneficial effects like slowing down time, exploding and destroying nearby balls, or rewinding the line of balls for a brief time. There are also a few weapon power-ups for players to manually aim: lasers, triple shots, and a lightning shot that destroys most or all balls of a single color. These can be slightly tough to aim on a touch screen…

Controls

The Zuma games started life as PC titles in which players aim with a mouse pointed. On consoles, less precise analog sticks control the aiming along with the help of a guide line. The Windows Phone version requires players to press and hold in a direction to aim and then release to fire. That’s the only way the game could work, but touch-screen aiming is slower than non-mobile versions and your finger will sometimes block your view.

Like many puzzle games, Zuma’s Revenge allows players to see both the current ball they have to fire and the next ball after that. Unlike most other games, both the current and next ball are actually swappable, enhancing the strategy. In the Windows Phone game, tapping the frog instead of holding him swaps the balls.

I often wished for an on-screen swap button because I tend to press and hold on my frog immediately after each shot. Once you press and hold, you can’t cancel the shot, so swapping becomes impossible at that point. The swapping issue doesn’t hurt the game too much, but a button at the top of the screen would’ve made it a non-issue.

Adventure time

This version offers two game modes: Adventure and Challenge. Adventure consists of a trip across all six regions of Tiki Island. Each region consists of 10 levels, for a total of 60 levels. Boss battles follow each region’s tenth level. You’ll fire at bosses to damage them, but most bosses have their own special mechanics to worry about. One can only be damaged by explosive power-ups, while another won’t get hurt unless you knock his two guard totems out first. These battles make for a fun break from the standard puzzling.

Challenge Mode regions unlock as you progress through the Adventure. Challenge offers the same levels (sans bosses), but they can be selected and replayed at will instead of following a linear progression. The requirements for passing a stage differ by mode too. In Adventure, you have to raise your score enough to fill the Zuma meter, which then causes new balls to stop coming. Challenge Mode stages last three minutes no matter what. To pass, you’ll need to reach a specific score before the timer stops. This makes Challenge stages harder, but at least you can replay them as many times as necessary.

Platform comparisons

Left: A measly local leaderboard. Right: an Adventure mode Checkpoint.

The PC version of Revenge offers three modes: Adventure, Challenge, and Iron Frog. The XBLA version loses Challenge but gains Boss Rush and Weekly Challenges. The mobile version only has the aforementioned two modes, but Iron Frog is too hard to be fun and thus no great loss.

However, the XBLA game (which released after the iOS game on which the Windows Phone port is based) added several substantial improvements beyond new modes. Chief among them is the ability to replay Adventure levels at will, negating the need for a Challenge Mode. The XBLA game also has individual leaderboards for every level and always compares the player’s performance with his or her friends at the end of a level, greatly increasing the game’s competitive aspect and replay value.

Sadly, none of those improvements (which you can read about here) trickled down to Windows Phone and iOS. On the phone, players can’t continue from any Adventure level. Instead, they have to reach checkpoints every five levels and continue from there. It’s strange because the XBLA setup would actually work better on phones since it lets you play for less time while still making progress. Also, the Windows Phone game only has a single Friends leaderboard for all of Adventure. Individual levels and Challenge levels only have lazy local scoreboards instead of online leaderboards.

Achievements

Only two or three of the Achievements here will provide much of a challenge. Adventure Mode will be tough for some players to beat since they have to clear levels 55-60 all in one go. But the Achievement for beating every Challenge level takes time, skill, and a bit of luck. The score goals on some levels are really high. To reach them, I had to replay some levels several times, and I’m a strong player. Practice!

The real Challenge comes from ‘Frozen Frog’ for beating a rail level without moving. In rail levels, the frog slides horizontally or vertically along a rail, depending on where he’s aiming. This Achievement is no big deal on Xbox 360 because the frog starts in the center of the rail and can easily aim straight ahead without budging from his position.

On Windows Phone, he starts at the left-most edge of the level (!) and any nudge will cause him to move. Plus the best level to get this is Adventure 1-5, which means you’ll have to play through four quick levels to even attempt it. I got it after about an hour of trying, but some players probably won’t be able to pull it off.

Overall Impression

Zuma’s Revenge might not be as perfectly polished as the XBLA version, but it’s still one of the very best Windows Phone games. The color-matching gameplay never fails to be fast, challenging, and exciting. PopCap put so much care into the presentation, from the various start-up loading screen jokes to the way a ball spins down into place after being fired. The graphics are sharp and colorful, and the sound effects are as perfect as we’d expect from PopCap. Now that Windows Phone has Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled Live+, and Zuma's Revenge, let's hope PopCap's Peggle isn't far behind.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Three Xbox Live games that were branded as Nokia exclusives for Windows Phone have been made available to all owners of all Windows Phone devices.

Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge, and iBomber Defense, have all been made their way into the Windows Phone Store for general consumption on Windows Phone 7 and 8.

So what are they all about? In our review of Zuma's Revenge, we described the game as thus:

"Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…"

Meanwhile, Bejewelled Live+ should be familiar to most casual gamers. From our review:

"Bejeweled Live+ puts the first Bejeweled Live to shame. It has way more content and yet costs two dollars less, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the original game gets de-listed whenever Live+ becomes available to non-Nokia users. Heck, Live+ even trumps the recently released Bejeweled Live for Windows 8 as well since that one lacks Lightning and Zen modes."

And finally, iBomber Defense is a unique war strategy game for Windows Phone, bringing quite a bit of fun to the mix. Once again, from our review:

"Alright, so iBomber Defense doesn’t run as well as it should and the Achievements are crazy hard and slow to come by. It’s still my favorite traditional tower defense game (in the Xbox WP lineup) though. The graphics and setting are less flashy than geoDefense, but much more visually interesting. Continuing the comparison, turrets in this game always cost the same amount and have the same stats, unlike geoDefense’s crazy variable stats. iBomber provides a smoother and more cohesive experience."

The three games are all published by Electronic Arts, a long-time maker of Xbox games. We haven't seen any formal announcements, but it looks like it could be part of an agreement between EA and Nokia to get these games to a wider audience after a certain amount of time. We've seen other Nokia-exclusive games like the Mirror's Edge, get released later on after a stint of being offered only to Nokia phone owners, so this is certainly not unprecedented.

The trio of games can still be found in the Nokia Collection on your Nokia phone or in the general population of games.

You can get Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge and iBomber Defense in the Windows Phone Store, each for $2.99.

Thanks for the tip, Er. Akshat!

Today, EA has kicked off a rather exciting deal on six of its Xbox Windows Phone titles, currently available on the store. Should you be staring at your Games collection and wondering just what can be added to waste some more of those minutes, look no further. Hop on past the break to find out exactly which games EA has put on sale just for you

It's worth noting that all these games are Xbox Live enabled. That means you'll be able to add some gamerscore to your ID and enjoy a complete experience from a well-established publisher. Without further ado, here are the titles and respective store links:

• The Sims 3 - $3.99 (previously $6.99)
• The Game of Life - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Picnic Wars - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• MONOPOLY - $2.99 (previously $4.99)
• RISK - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Zuma's Revenge - $0.99 (previously $2.99)

The best part about the above deals as not only can Windows Phone 8 owners take advantage of the lowered pricing, but also those who still rock older hardware. It's not known how long these offers will remain active for. Which titles will you be downloading?

via: Windows Phone Italy

A few weeks ago, a bunch of Xbox Windows Phone games (mostly Nokia collection titles) went on sale at once. Nokia, who seems to have organized the sale, also announced that several more games would be discounted in early December.

Those titles (and a few more) are now on sale. We’ve got Contre Jour, Flight Control Rocket, Spy Mouse, Storm in a Teacup, Vampire Rush, and Zuma’s Revenge are all on sale for 99 cents. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, which regularly sells for $4.99, has been marked down to $2.99. All seven games come from Electronic Arts and/or its subsidiaries Chillingo and PopCap.

Head past the break for descriptions and Store links!

Contre Jour (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 33 MB Store Link

We’re still waiting on the Windows 8 version of Contre Jour, but at least we can get the Windows Phone version for cheap in the meantime.

Contre Jour is one of the loveliest Windows Phone games thanks to its effective use of light and silhouette, not to mention the haunting musical score. The goal is to get the tentacled protagonist Petit to each level’s exit while collecting all the lights along the way. Instead of directly controlling Petit, players manipulate the environment by stretching the ground and activating various gadgets.

Technically this is a physics puzzler, but the bold art direction and unique gameplay puts it in a separate league from other genre entries. The difficulty is pretty steep… But if you get stuck, there are guides available online.

Flight Control Rocket (Windows Phone 7 and 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 41 MB Store Link

You’ve probably played the original Flight Control, but perhaps you missed its mostly superior sequel. This one switches things to a retro sci-fi setting in which players must help incoming rockets land on a space-faring mothership safely. You do this by drawing paths from each ship to the appropriate runway, all while trying to avoid collisions.

Not only is FC Rocket way prettier than its forbear, it also offers a lot more gameplay. The three modes each mix the gameplay up in interesting ways, changing up the combo scoring system, bonus rounds, and even mixing in stranded astronauts to rescue. Players can also purchase and equip a variety of robot helpers to customize the gameplay a bit.

The only catch is that FC Rocket’s Achievements are horrendously grindy. The original iOS game allowed users to make IN-App Purchases that would speed them up, but there is no such option on Windows Phone. Still, as I say in our review, if you ignore Achievements this is the best line-drawing game in town.

Spy Mouse (Windows Phone 7 and 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 111 MB Store Link

Spy Mouse's developer Firemint is best known for popularizing the line-drawing genre with Flight Control. In this one, they’ve utilized that line drawing tech to make a stealth game. Players control the titular mouse by drawing a path around each level. He’ll need to grab cheese and reach the level exit without being nabbed by patrolling cats.

Each level has three optional goals such as not being spotted, drawing only one continuous path, and finishing within a certain time limit. Completing every level with those goals completed will net some tasty Achievements.

Storm in a Teacup (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 32 MBStore Link

The game stars a little boy named Storm who hops around in a teacup through fanciful levels dreamed up by his brother Cloud in this touch screen platformer.

Storm in a Teacup is extremely simplistic in the graphics department – the backgrounds don’t even use parallax scrolling, which they sorely need. And yet the frame rate is somewhere in the 10-15 FPS range. It’s like Gameloft’s 3D Windows Phone 8 games, only nothing complex is even going on under the hood. Blame Cobra, whose port of iBomber Defense also runs quite poorly.

Still, if you can tolerate crap graphics and love platformers, you might be able to put up with this one. I’d definitely play Sonic CD and Little Acorns first though.

Vampire Rush (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 99 MBStore Link

In Vampire Rush, players take on the role of Captain Greg, a British swashbuckler. Only Greg can stand between the gates of the city and armies of the undead in this mix of tower defense with hack-and-slash action.

You’ll run around each map, hunting down vampires and their kin on the map and swording them into oblivion. Sometimes they drop gold, which can then be used to build and upgrade turrets or purchase character upgrades. Just don’t let the enemies reach the gate or Greg and the village will meet an untimely demise. Check out our full review for more details.

Vampire Rush features both a campaign mode and survival mode, the latter of which was added in an update. That same update fixed a broken Achievement, but failed to fix another broken one. A-Steroids has told us they would like to get the final Achievement working, but it seems unlikely to happen at this point.

Zuma’s Revenge (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 197 MBStore Link

Zuma’s Revenge put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. Levels in which the frog can hop between lily pads, move along a slider, or battle boastful bosses keep the game fresh and challenging.

The mobile version of Zuma’s Revenge is pretty much a straight port of the PC game. Adventure Mode gives players a limited number of lives and they must reach checkpoints every few levels in order to continue when those lives run out. So the Windows Phone game ends up a bit harder than the Xbox 360 version. Beating levels unlocks them for free play in Challenge Mode, at least.

PopCap pretty much makes nothing but great games (most recently Peggle 2on Xbox One), and Zuma’s Revenge is no exception. Read our full review to learn more.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Windows Phone 7 or 8)

Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $2.99 Download size: 113 MBStore Link

Need for Speed: Rivals might be one of the better Xbox One launch games, but not every Need for Speed is a winner. Take the Windows Phone version of Hot Pursuit, for example. Sure, it looks pretty for a Windows Phone 7 game and has the slick menus and licensed music you’d expect from this series. It even lets players choose between controlling a cop or a street racer, just like Rivals.

Presentation isn’t everything though; a game needs to be fun to play. Hot Pursuit starts out fun but gets insanely difficult and grindy before too long. You’ll need to do the same races over and over again in order to unlock the cars needed to compete in higher level events. Even then, some events simply require perfection from the player – not easy or fun given the phone game’s naturally less precise controls. See our review for more proof of frustration.

Get them while they’re hot

Nokia and EA haven’t advertised when this sale will end. Maybe it will last a week, maybe less. If you’re interested in a sale game, better to download them now rather than waiting.

What do you think of this sale selection, dear readers? Did you grab Zuma’s Revenge or any of the other games?

Thanks to Diego Magnani for the tip!

PopCap Games may be best known for their sublime Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $2.99 this week!), but they actually produce a number of stellar franchises like Peggle and Zuma. We interviewed PopCap about those two series coming to Windows Phone last year, and we’ll continue to ask about them whenever we can. PopCap seems to work on one game for one platform at a time, and they’ve just completed a new Xbox Live Arcade release: Zuma’s Revenge. It just came out yesterday, but I’ve been playing the game for a week now in order to bring you this review.

The original Zuma Deluxe was an XBLA launch title way back in 2006. Basically an enhanced clone of classic arcade game Puzz Loop (aka Magnetica), the Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. It’s sort of like Bubble Town 2 but much, much better and more varied.

Head past the break for our full impressions and more screenshots.

Island adventure

Zuma’s Revenge enhances the formula with two new types of levels: lily pad and rail levels. Lily pads allow the frog to jump between two different spots at will. This gives players more freedom, but also adds to the challenge since you’ll need to manage both spots effectively. Rail levels let the frog slide up/down or left/right along a rail, firing only at a right angle rather than the usual 360 degrees. The frog slides a bit too fast for my tastes, but I still enjoyed the diversion.

Adventure Mode starts out with an amusing 360-exclusive intro depicting the heroic, unnamed frog’s journey 2 a mysterious island. He’ll need to explore all six regions of the island, each consisting of 10 levels and a boss battle. These bosses have their own unique abilities, such as shields that can only be penetrated with Bomb power-ups or guardian idols who must be knocked out before you can get a hit in. They also crack a few jokes before and after battle, bolstering the lighthearted atmosphere.

The original XBLA Zuma was a fun but overly challenging game with several nigh impossible Achievements (I only got 70 GamerScore from it). Thankfully Zuma’s Revenge is far more approachable and fair to players. First off, you only need to beat one Adventure Mode level at a time instead of five in a row. Individual stages can be replayed at any time for higher scores and better completion times, unlocking special Spirit Badges. As if that didn’t boost replay value enough, the game displays a level’s online leaderboard whenever you select or complete it, greatly enticing me to go after higher scores (seriously, look for EastX).

Party animals

The aforementioned Spirit Badges tie into another of Revenge’s XBLA-exclusive improvements: Spirit Animals! See, one reason the first Zuma was so tough is that when the porting team brought the game from PC to XBLA, they didn’t rebalance the difficulty to accommodate for controllers being less accurate than mice. The higher levels basically expected faster and more precise reactions than most gamers could consistently make.

This time however, you’ll unlock four companion creatures as you play through Adventure Mode. They provide useful score and gameplay modifiers like increasing firing speed or power-up spawn rate. Give the animals Badges and their powers increase; you can even remove the badges from one animal to pump up another or just increase the challenge.

Zuma’s Revenge offers three additional modes on top of its lengthy Adventure. Weekly Challenges ask players to post their best scores on a specific level, whereas Boss Rush is a marathon  of seven boss battles (and its own leaderboard). Iron Frog Mode recalls the steep challenge of the original Zuma, for better or worse. Its 10 levels must be completed in a row without dying. Starting with the sixth level it gets pretty frustrating, even for an experienced Zuma player like yours truly. Still, the associated Achievement will certainly look impressive on a select few gamers’ profiles. Check out my Achievement Guide for more details.

Overall Impressions

PopCap Games shows an amazing ability to produce games that are simple enough for casual audiences and yet vast enough to attract the hardcore crowd. Zuma’s Revenge is no different: the welcoming graphics, absolutely perfect sound effects, and quickly-learnable puzzle mechanics will endear the game to your significant other. Meanwhile, you’ll be busy replaying dozens of stages and multiple modes as you hunt for more Badges and better scores. Simply put, Zuma’s Revenge is one of the best puzzle games I’ve played on any console. Let’s hope PopCap brings us the Windows Phone version we deserve – until then, I’ll be happily blasting balls on the 360.

Zuma’s Revenge costs 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Get it here from the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Paul Acevedo (left) and Ben Ahroni

I made no secret of my love for recent XBLA release Zuma’s Revenge in my review– after all, it’s a PopCap game. Those guys practically always knock it out of the park. As it happens, Casual Connect Seattle featured a panel on the connected experience (gaming on TV, tablet, smartphone: SmartGlass-type stuff).

Who should we find among the panelists but the producer of Zuma’s Revenge, Ben Ahroni. Naturally I snagged him for a video interview. See Ben discuss Zuma, a potential sequel to Plants vs. Zombies, and Windows Phone after the break!

Ben’s move from playing lengthy games to more casual ones echoes a sentiment we heard from many developers over the course of the conference. It seems that as gamers become busier with work and/or family, many gravitate towards games that can be enjoyed in small sessions as opposed to marathon play. The same is certainly true in my case; I’ve been working on Final Fantasy XIII for over a year! No wonder casual gaming has taken off in such a big way.

Does the interview leave you feeling optimistic about future PopCap titles on Windows Phone, dear readers? In the meantime, you can grab Zuma’s Revenge for XBLA here on the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Fun fact: the original Zuma released on Windows Mobile way back in 2009 for a staggering $14.95.

While some of us face the possibility that there might not be a new Xbox Windows Phone game release this week, Nokia owners should have no such complaints. Not only did Nokia and PopCap/EA just publish the vastly improved sequel Bejeweled Live+, two more Nokia Xbox exclusives just popped up! From the license lovers at Electronic Arts comes the board game adaptation Yahtzee, while PopCap has blessed Windows Phone at last with their fast-paced puzzler Zuma’s Revenge.

Dice dice baby

Yahtzee is one of those dice games like Bunko that the elderly set enjoys playing in between trips to the post office and bingo halls. Players and their opponents alternate turns at rolling dice, with the goal of achieving various combinations like 3-of-a-kind or the coveted 5-of-a-kind, formally known as a Yahtzee. Each combination can only be used once during a single game; the game ends when the player exhausts all possible combinations. It might sound a little complicated, but the in-game tutorial will get you rolling dice like your Grandma in no time.

This version of Yahtzee lacks online multiplayer (unlike World Series of Yahtzee, recently released on iOS), though it does support pass-and-play. Thankfully the developers added a fairly robust single-player mode in which players battle against AI opponents in various locals. That said, the AI cheats relentlessly, so expect to repeat many a battle. The overall presentation has a nice charm, though I wish the menus and transitions moved faster.

Nokia’s Yahtzee is a port of Yahtzee Adventures, a game that costs 99 cents on iOS. Like all Nokia Xbox exclusives, this one costs a slightly steeper $2.99. Windows Phone 7 and 8 users can view Yahtzee’s store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Frog fighting

Zuma’s Revenge was not among the games that Nokia and EA formally announced in January 2012, but thanks to EA buying out PopCap, here we are. And I’ve expected Revenge to make it to Windows Phone for quite a while, hence my interviewing the producer at Casual Connect Seattle last year.

Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. Levels in which the frog can hop between lily pads, move along a slider, or battle boastful bosses keep the game fresh and challenging.

The mobile version of Zuma’s Revenge is pretty much a straight port of the PC game, so it unfortunately lacks many of the refinements of the sublime XBLA version (impressions here). Adventure Mode gives players a limited number of lives and they must reach checkpoints every few levels in order to continue when those lives run out. So the Windows Phone game ends up a bit harder than the Xbox 360 version. Beating levels unlocks them for free play in Challenge Mode, at least.

We’ll have a full review of Zuma’s Revenge next week, but fans of the series can buy this one with confidence right now. It’s one of the stronger Nokia exclusives, right up there with Bejeweled Live+ and Flight Control Rocket.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Thanks to Jey Si and TNTjudbud for the tip!

Casual and hardcore (or ‘core’) games often appeal to one group of players while excluding the other. Aiming at just one slice of the gaming audience is well and good, but the holy grail of game development is bridging the gap by appealing to both audiences. Only one game developer has consistently managed to reach that lofty goal: PopCap. Now owned by EA, PopCap has finally returned to Windows Phone (7 and 8) with a port of its accessible yet challenging puzzle masterpiece Zuma’s Revenge.

As a Nokia exclusive, non-Nokia owners will have to wait six months to play Zuma’s Revenge. Read on to find out why it’s worth the wait.

Introducing the world's fastest spitting frog

Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…

If the balls on the edges of the gap created are of a like color (say you made a blue match and the edges now have red balls), the gap will snap shut and possibly create a chain reaction. If they’re not of like color, the gap stays open until the push of advancing balls closes it. During this time, shots can be fired through the gap, and any matches made in that fashion provide a score bonus.

At various intervals throughout a level, fruits will appear in different locations. Much like Pac-Man, collecting a fruit (by shooting it) provides a worthwhile score bonus. Fruits often appear behind the line of oncoming balls, so players will have to scramble to knock out some balls and quickly fire a shot through the gap to get them. Fruits often create cool risk-reward scenarios.

Power-ups also spawn randomly among the incoming line of balls. To collect one, you’ll need to create a match of the same colored balls before it disappears. Power-ups provide beneficial effects like slowing down time, exploding and destroying nearby balls, or rewinding the line of balls for a brief time. There are also a few weapon power-ups for players to manually aim: lasers, triple shots, and a lightning shot that destroys most or all balls of a single color. These can be slightly tough to aim on a touch screen…

Controls

The Zuma games started life as PC titles in which players aim with a mouse pointed. On consoles, less precise analog sticks control the aiming along with the help of a guide line. The Windows Phone version requires players to press and hold in a direction to aim and then release to fire. That’s the only way the game could work, but touch-screen aiming is slower than non-mobile versions and your finger will sometimes block your view.

Like many puzzle games, Zuma’s Revenge allows players to see both the current ball they have to fire and the next ball after that. Unlike most other games, both the current and next ball are actually swappable, enhancing the strategy. In the Windows Phone game, tapping the frog instead of holding him swaps the balls.

I often wished for an on-screen swap button because I tend to press and hold on my frog immediately after each shot. Once you press and hold, you can’t cancel the shot, so swapping becomes impossible at that point. The swapping issue doesn’t hurt the game too much, but a button at the top of the screen would’ve made it a non-issue.

Adventure time

This version offers two game modes: Adventure and Challenge. Adventure consists of a trip across all six regions of Tiki Island. Each region consists of 10 levels, for a total of 60 levels. Boss battles follow each region’s tenth level. You’ll fire at bosses to damage them, but most bosses have their own special mechanics to worry about. One can only be damaged by explosive power-ups, while another won’t get hurt unless you knock his two guard totems out first. These battles make for a fun break from the standard puzzling.

Challenge Mode regions unlock as you progress through the Adventure. Challenge offers the same levels (sans bosses), but they can be selected and replayed at will instead of following a linear progression. The requirements for passing a stage differ by mode too. In Adventure, you have to raise your score enough to fill the Zuma meter, which then causes new balls to stop coming. Challenge Mode stages last three minutes no matter what. To pass, you’ll need to reach a specific score before the timer stops. This makes Challenge stages harder, but at least you can replay them as many times as necessary.

Platform comparisons

Left: A measly local leaderboard. Right: an Adventure mode Checkpoint.

The PC version of Revenge offers three modes: Adventure, Challenge, and Iron Frog. The XBLA version loses Challenge but gains Boss Rush and Weekly Challenges. The mobile version only has the aforementioned two modes, but Iron Frog is too hard to be fun and thus no great loss.

However, the XBLA game (which released after the iOS game on which the Windows Phone port is based) added several substantial improvements beyond new modes. Chief among them is the ability to replay Adventure levels at will, negating the need for a Challenge Mode. The XBLA game also has individual leaderboards for every level and always compares the player’s performance with his or her friends at the end of a level, greatly increasing the game’s competitive aspect and replay value.

Sadly, none of those improvements (which you can read about here) trickled down to Windows Phone and iOS. On the phone, players can’t continue from any Adventure level. Instead, they have to reach checkpoints every five levels and continue from there. It’s strange because the XBLA setup would actually work better on phones since it lets you play for less time while still making progress. Also, the Windows Phone game only has a single Friends leaderboard for all of Adventure. Individual levels and Challenge levels only have lazy local scoreboards instead of online leaderboards.

Achievements

Only two or three of the Achievements here will provide much of a challenge. Adventure Mode will be tough for some players to beat since they have to clear levels 55-60 all in one go. But the Achievement for beating every Challenge level takes time, skill, and a bit of luck. The score goals on some levels are really high. To reach them, I had to replay some levels several times, and I’m a strong player. Practice!

The real Challenge comes from ‘Frozen Frog’ for beating a rail level without moving. In rail levels, the frog slides horizontally or vertically along a rail, depending on where he’s aiming. This Achievement is no big deal on Xbox 360 because the frog starts in the center of the rail and can easily aim straight ahead without budging from his position.

On Windows Phone, he starts at the left-most edge of the level (!) and any nudge will cause him to move. Plus the best level to get this is Adventure 1-5, which means you’ll have to play through four quick levels to even attempt it. I got it after about an hour of trying, but some players probably won’t be able to pull it off.

Overall Impression

Zuma’s Revenge might not be as perfectly polished as the XBLA version, but it’s still one of the very best Windows Phone games. The color-matching gameplay never fails to be fast, challenging, and exciting. PopCap put so much care into the presentation, from the various start-up loading screen jokes to the way a ball spins down into place after being fired. The graphics are sharp and colorful, and the sound effects are as perfect as we’d expect from PopCap. Now that Windows Phone has Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled Live+, and Zuma's Revenge, let's hope PopCap's Peggle isn't far behind.

Zuma’s Revenge costs $2.99 and works great on Windows Phone 7 and 8. It clocks in at a whopping 197 megabytes, so watch out if you're low on space. View the Zuma's Revenge store page here, but it can only be purchased from a Lumia phone.

Three Xbox Live games that were branded as Nokia exclusives for Windows Phone have been made available to all owners of all Windows Phone devices.

Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge, and iBomber Defense, have all been made their way into the Windows Phone Store for general consumption on Windows Phone 7 and 8.

So what are they all about? In our review of Zuma's Revenge, we described the game as thus:

"Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…"

Meanwhile, Bejewelled Live+ should be familiar to most casual gamers. From our review:

"Bejeweled Live+ puts the first Bejeweled Live to shame. It has way more content and yet costs two dollars less, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the original game gets de-listed whenever Live+ becomes available to non-Nokia users. Heck, Live+ even trumps the recently released Bejeweled Live for Windows 8 as well since that one lacks Lightning and Zen modes."

And finally, iBomber Defense is a unique war strategy game for Windows Phone, bringing quite a bit of fun to the mix. Once again, from our review:

"Alright, so iBomber Defense doesn’t run as well as it should and the Achievements are crazy hard and slow to come by. It’s still my favorite traditional tower defense game (in the Xbox WP lineup) though. The graphics and setting are less flashy than geoDefense, but much more visually interesting. Continuing the comparison, turrets in this game always cost the same amount and have the same stats, unlike geoDefense’s crazy variable stats. iBomber provides a smoother and more cohesive experience."

The three games are all published by Electronic Arts, a long-time maker of Xbox games. We haven't seen any formal announcements, but it looks like it could be part of an agreement between EA and Nokia to get these games to a wider audience after a certain amount of time. We've seen other Nokia-exclusive games like the Mirror's Edge, get released later on after a stint of being offered only to Nokia phone owners, so this is certainly not unprecedented.

The trio of games can still be found in the Nokia Collection on your Nokia phone or in the general population of games.

You can get Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge and iBomber Defense in the Windows Phone Store, each for $2.99.

Thanks for the tip, Er. Akshat!

Today, EA has kicked off a rather exciting deal on six of its Xbox Windows Phone titles, currently available on the store. Should you be staring at your Games collection and wondering just what can be added to waste some more of those minutes, look no further. Hop on past the break to find out exactly which games EA has put on sale just for you

It's worth noting that all these games are Xbox Live enabled. That means you'll be able to add some gamerscore to your ID and enjoy a complete experience from a well-established publisher. Without further ado, here are the titles and respective store links:

• The Sims 3 - $3.99 (previously $6.99)
• The Game of Life - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Picnic Wars - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• MONOPOLY - $2.99 (previously $4.99)
• RISK - $1.99 (previously $2.99)
• Zuma's Revenge - $0.99 (previously $2.99)

The best part about the above deals as not only can Windows Phone 8 owners take advantage of the lowered pricing, but also those who still rock older hardware. It's not known how long these offers will remain active for. Which titles will you be downloading?

via: Windows Phone Italy