Numblast review

Is there any room left on your PS3 hard drive for an old-fashioned block puzzler when Trash Panic is calling?

12DOVE Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Decent brain-teasing

  • +

    Room to develop tactics

  • +

    Isn't too hard

Cons

  • -

    Not enough game modes

  • -

    No two-player

  • -

    Just doesn't do anything new

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The advent of Trash Panic has raised our expectations of what a puzzle game should be like, and while Numblast is a decent brain-teaser with room to develop tactics, it offers nothing new to help maintain our interest. Games like Numblast have been haunting the fringes of PlayStation since way back when the first little grey box of tricks appeared, and this new addition to the puzzle genre is no different than the countless tile-busting puzzlers you will have played many times before.

The basic aim is to clear tiles from the board by aligning the same numbers together in blocks of 4x4 patterns. Once you get one, the number on the tile ticks up from one to four, and any two tiles with the same number that touch your initial four as they tick up will explode. In theory, you can clear the whole board in one go if you pre-set all the tiles to explode in sequence. That idea alone has probably got some idle minds twitching, but the game is a far more studied and laborious experience in practise.

There are more subtle additions to the gameplay: igniting long combos will award you with a Special tile, that will explode every similar number on the board when connected into a 4x4 block, so you could clear all the ‘4’ tiles in one go.

The main problem with Numblast is there’s just not enough to get your teeth into. With only three game modes – Time Trial, Puzzle and Endless – we soon felt like we were going over the same ground only with slightly different rules. There’s no two-player or Challenge mode and no extensive shifts in gear. The game plays at one pace and rarely forces you to think very hard about any of the choices you’ll have to make in order to succeed. A two player mode would have been ideal.

Numblast is a very simple puzzle game; it’s nice enough, but with Trash Panic already on the PSN Store, this needed to do something radically new to drag us away. Which it didn’t.

Jun 18, 2009

More info

GenrePuzzle
DescriptionNumblast is a very simple puzzle game, it’s nice enough, but with Trash Panic already on the PSN Store, this needed to do something radically new to drag us away. Which it didn’t.
Platform"PS3"
US censor rating"Everyone"
UK censor rating"3+"
Alternative names"Qruton"
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Ian Dean

Imagine FX and Creative Bloq editor Ian Dean is an expert on all things digital arts. Formerly the editor of Official PlayStation Magazine, PLAY Magazine, 3D World, XMB, X360, and PlayStation World, he’s no stranger to gaming, either. He’ll happily debate you for hours over the virtues of Days Gone, then settle the argument on the pitch over a game of PES (pausing frequently while he cooks a roast dinner in the background). Just don’t call it eFootball, or it might bring tears to his eyes for the ISS glory days on PS1.