bubble pop electric
When it comes to the little dragon brothers, Bub and Bob, Bubble Bobble will always be my go-to fix for the series. Puzzle Bobble; however, has been an impressive spin-off to feature the duo, featuring addictive bubble-popping puzzles within the confines of a colorful and charming presentation. Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey takes the formula of the past games and transfers them to a 3D world, bringing all the same appeal and charm of its past, as well as a temperamental aiming system that sadly can ruin the fun.
Puzzle Bobble has a pretty simple design. You are given a puzzle built with interconnected bubbles that need to be cleared in order to solve the puzzle. Blue bubbles will eliminate Blue bubbles, red with red, and so on. If you connect at least three of the same color, those bubbles will pop and you’ll continue on until the playing area is empty. In Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey, the same still holds true, however, you’ll have to spend a single bubble to pop the core that lies beneath of collective of the series’ colorful bubbles.
As Bub and Bob work together to once again save their respective partners, you’ll once again be tossed a random colored bubble to use in some fashion to clear the field. You can swap out to the next one, but as the offering you receive is randomized to what colors are left on the field, the RNG can often work against you; but that is part of the way you’ll look to conquer each of the 100 puzzles within the game’s lengthy story mode.
Despite the charming 3D models given to Bub, Bob, and the crew, the story mode is presented in static images rolled out every ten levels to illustrate more of the fairly minimal storytelling that is going on. You’ll move around a map from island to island, taking on more complex puzzles as time goes on. You have the more standard static puzzles to those that move, turn, and rotate around all while clearing them either under a set goal or within the time limit. While I really enjoyed the puzzles where I was given a set amount of bubbles to work with, it’s the timed ones that caused a great deal of frustration, and not for the reason you might think.
The 2D versions of Puzzle Bobble were easy to handle, rotating the bubble launcher left and right and having your bubble lock into place when you fired your shot. Here, you have a launcher that illustrates its intended target with a thin colored line that suitably shows you where it is expected to land and what color the bubble is. While the VR mode included with the PS4 version makes knowing what color you have far more apparent, it’s the finicky aiming system here that starts to cause far too much frustration for what should be a very simple and working mechanic.
As puzzles move around and rotate, your intended area of where your bubble will hit may vary. You’ll fire a shot and if it doesn’t hit just right, you’ll often see your bubble catch the side of its neighbor, causing your shot to fail and your now intended target likely blocked behind your previous toss. Had there been a way to lock in your shot and guarantee where it would end up, I’d have zero issues with how this game plays in a 3D space, but as it is, this inconsistency is simply disappointing, which is a shame since the non-timed puzzles are often a joy.
As you receive your bubble, you’ll use the colored strand to line up your shot. Hitting a connected color that holds a huge chunk of the bubbles that make up the puzzle. A well-placed shot can often cause large collections of bubbles to be removed from the puzzle, erupting with a “yayyy!!” sound coming from your controller. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen all the time or that might get pretty annoying. Still, having one bubble drop off dozens of bubbles is pretty thrilling. As you eliminate all the bubbles around a power core at its center, you’ll complete the puzzle and move on to the next challenge.
Each challenge is graded by a three-star system. As you win, you’ll earn coins that be used to unlock a series of items. You’ll need to spend coins to simply unlock the items, and then spend coins to purchase the items individually. One of these items is a bomb that should blast a chunk of bubbles clean off but in actuality, it would barely have that much of an impact that I simply couldn’t be bothered to really purchase them. That, and earning coins feels far too slow and unrewarding. Thankfully, you can replay stages to earn coins faster on stages you can easily hit those high scores on.
What works well in a 3D space is the ability to use bubbles to spin around the large collections of bubbles, and this works well when trying to either exhaust a certain color offered to you or build a huge heap of bubbles that you know you can toss off with a well-placed shot to the color holding them in place. With its bright and colorful visuals, this game and its puzzles do look solid, especially with Bub and Bob being rendered in some charming little 3D models.
Via the PlayStation 5 version, there are some Dual Sense features that can take a while to get used to. The adaptive triggers calculate the strength of your shot with how much you hold down R2. It’s an interesting idea, but one that simply doesn’t pay off in a game where precision and accuracy are more crucial than shot power since that really doesn’t factor into the game whatsoever.
Apart from the story mode, there is Duel Mode and Infinite Mode. Infinite Mode has you solving a rapid series of puzzles as you attempt to prevent the cores from rising up to the top of the screen to be swallowed up into a vortex, whereas Duel Mode allows you to play against someone online, but in all my hours of playing the game, I couldn't find a single match.
While there are three different versions included in the overall package; PlayStation 4, PSVR, and PlayStation 5, there is no cross-save or cross-progression between the PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 versions, however, there is between the PlayStation 4 and VR versions. This is likely due to how Sony has structured its games from generation to generation.
Despite my issues with aiming within puzzles that move around or rotate, Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey is a pretty decent spin on evolving the gameplay away from its 2D origins. I don’t think it fully excels in making that conversion, but it is nonetheless still a solid attempt. I enjoy the visual presentation and colorful nature of what is here but would have loved to see those 3D models do more to make that story mode a bit more engaging than just being a slideshow of small images rolled out from time to time. Still, at a pretty cheap price of $26.99cad, it offers a ton of puzzles and content to keep you busy, as well as all three versions to play across either the PlayStation 4, PSVR, or PlayStation 5.
While Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey was released last April digitally, the game has finally been made available physically at various retailers as well as the official website here.
Developer - Survios. Publisher - Survios, Taito, United Games Entertainment GmbH. Released - May 10th, 2021 (Digital), September 9th, 2022 (Physical Release) Available On - PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PlayStation 5. Rated - (E) No Descriptors. Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5.. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.