Author: EVula
Date: 9/1/02
Rating: 9.3
Platform(s): Mac/PC
More Info:
Official Site
pop-pop is the latest game by Ambrosia Software, the same fine people who also brought us the Escape Velocity series. pop-pop is a trippy little game, and can best be described like this: Pong meets acid.
The concept for pop-pop isn't exactly anything new; basically, all you're doing is smacking a ball into some bricks to win. Brickles, for really old Macs, did this, as did other games, like MacBrickout. However, neither of those games were multiplayer, and neither of those games were so fantastically visually stunning, and neither had quite the same level of gameplay that pop-pop has.
Starting up the game, you have two options for play: you can either play a Versus game or a Puzzle game. Puzzle is the single-player side of the game, and so you go through level after level (only six levels unless you register), smashing bricks to score points. There are four difficulty levels, and it can be quite challenging, and extremely fun. However...
...yeah, smashing bricks is fun. However, pop-pop really shines in the Versus mode. In this mode, you have three choices: either play against the computer, play against another human on your machine (get a second mouse for this), or play a Network game. I suggest playing a few rounds against the AI before venturing out into Network games.
Ambrosia provides two ways to play multi-player. You can either use GameRanger, the huge Mac-only gaming services that provides a huge group of gamers for multiple games, or you can use the built-in tracker to find active games. If you use this, you'll see a list of all the users on at the moment (be sure to look for me, I'm "EVula"), and a list of all the games. Grayed-out games mean that they're currently going on and have the two players needed, while white ones are the ones you want to check out.
The basic layout for multiplayer (single player is similar, just without the split screen) is you on the left, your opponent (whether it is the computer or some random bloke from across cyberspace) is on the left. After you pick one of seven characters (each character has a different special ability you can use), you begin whacking away at the bricks. Every so often, the bricks will drop a level; if a single brick gets below a certain point, you've lost that round. You can gain energy with busted bricks and with power-ups, and use that energy to either charge your paddle to smash more bricks, or to charge up your special skill against your opponent. Chaos ensues from that moment forth...
Perfect though? No, there are still a few things that I'd like to see. The most significant one would be a way to chat and IM people on the built-in tracker. Messaging people via the game names isn't the best way to do it. Actually, that's really the only thing that I can think of. Hot diggity. :)
All in all, Ambrosia has a definite hit on it's hands with pop-pop. When you combine it's hypnotizing graphics with the intense gameplay, you'll lose many an hour playing this game. Whether that's a good thing or not, though, is up to you...