Giveaway of the Day - Action Ball 2

Installation:

The game downloads as a 16.7MB zip file that unpacks to a read me that contains the terms and conditions and a wrapped dual activation and set up module. It’s now protected with the security software Themida. For the newcomers amongst today’s users that means the game will be registered once it’s gone through the set up process, so there’s no registering the game with an activation code. Please note contrary to what some would have you believe Themida is not malware and does not leave any traces of the softwatre on your computer once the game has been installed. Please read my note at the end of the review for further details, especially if you are having problems installing the game.

The game installs to:

C:\Games\ActionBall2\actionball 2.exe

The installed game is 15.6MB in size. There is no shortcuts installed, so make a note of where you install the game to. You can choose to install to the default position or choose your own path. The game should work on all windows operating systems from XP onwards. (I’ve tested it on XP Pro with SP3 32 bit, Vista Home Premium SP1 64 bit and Win 7 Pro and Ultimate 64 bit). If you miss todays giveaway you can get it 24/7 from MyPlayCity See near end of the review for a download link.

Introduction

Action Ball 2 is a no-holds barred arcade game that blends the hottest brick-busting action you’ve ever seen with the thrilling battles of space shooters. As you use one of four selectable paddles to hit one or more balls toward eye-dazzling arrays of destructible objects, you’ll also have to battle four new robots that are out to foil your efforts. One of the robots repairs destroyed bricks while another fires missiles at your paddle!

Action Ball 2 comes with more than 30 bonuses to capture and use, although not all of them are helpful. You can also apply four upgrades to your paddle, making you an unstoppable force as you battle your way to the final showdown. You’ll also enjoy the improved level design, which is more clever this time through and features challenges not seen in other Breakout hits. So download Action Ball 2 today. We believe you’ll find it’s one of the most addictive games you’ve ever played!

Reference accessed HERE August 2012

The Game:

The precursor to Actionball 2 called Actionball Deluxe used to be in my top 10 all time favorite arkanoids.; it was one of the first 3D arkanoids that actually game me a challenge compared to the likes of the Magic Ball series (now called Smash Ball Frenzy), the Strikeball series and others such as Neoball, Roboball and Timebreaker.

Most 3D style arkanoid/breakouts are easy compared to the 2D versions (IMHO). Actionball Deluxe and to a slightly lesser extent Actionball 2 are a little more challenging than most other 3D arkanoids apart from maybe Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires and a few others that I can’t remember at this moment in time.

As with all breakouts the basic gameplay involves keeping a ball or balls in play until you’ve destroyed all of the bricks on the game arena. You are aided in this by power-up’s that appear when you destroy certain bricks. Power-up’s are the type that remain until you’ve used up the ammo or in the case of ball changes, and force fields are permanent until you either lose a ball or hit a force field. You can accumulate as many force fields as you can collect power up tokens as they drop. All power-up’s are upgradable, but you have to collect points to upgrade them. Some power-up’s cannot be upgraded at the beginning of the game, you have to unlock the upgrades as you progress through the levels.

After every three or four levels you get to play a mini game where you have to stop falling pieces from reaching the bottom. You have a Gatling gun to destroy them but you must collect power-up’s to ensure you have enough bullets to complete the task. This is a timed event. You can see how much time you have via the bar at the top of the game arena. For every 25 robot ships you destroy, you will get an extra life, infrequently there are also power ups that give you an extra life. The best place to destroy robot ships is in the mini game. There are several different types of robot ships each with a different function. Some repair bricks that you have damaged, others replace bricks and others will shoot rockets at your bat and others shoot rockets at other robot ships (this is activated by a power up (though I may be confusing it with the original). some power-up’s are pretty rare others more frequent..

Every fifth or sixth level you have a boss fight where you have to destroy a large robot ship. These can be quite difficult to kill. Try and earn at least one extra life before getting to your first boss battle. I’ve posted some videos of gameplay that demonstrate normal game play, the mini game and boss battle.

I’ve listed what I consider the Pro’s and Con’s of Actionball 2 below. There aren’t many Con’s IMO, which is why I consider this one of the better breakouts available. It’s just a pity number 3 occurs occasionally.

Pro’s:

1) … Excellent choice of Power-Up’s

2) … Not too easy (there’s three levels of difficulty)

3) … Ability to upgrade Power -Up’s

4) … Bonus Rounds (Mini Game) included

5) … Challenging Boss Battles

6) … Generous number of levels

.

Con’s:

1) … Cannot use more than 6 letters for profile name

2) … No level editor

3) … Sometimes the ball gets stuck in a loop – usually this is cleared when a robot appears, but sometimes no robots appear and you have to restart the level.

Classic Breakout Action:

Action Ball 2 picks up where its predecessor left off with even more intense 3-D Breakout styled action. Maneuver your paddle along the bottom of the screen with your mouse and keep that ball from passing by. Destroy all of the bricks on each level before you run out of lives and advance to ever more complex level designs.
Keep an eye out for the more than 30 powerful bonuses you can catch with your paddle to make things a bit easier. Utilize such enhancements as explosive balls, multi-ball, and attraction, or bring the fight to the enemy with various weapons, like machine guns, cannons, or the powerful laser.

Test Your Reflexes

With scores of enemies and power-ups to keep track of, you’ll have your hands full as you try to keep track of that pesky ball and finish each level as quickly as possible. Complete the levels and earn upgrade points to increase the size of you paddle, the damage your weapons inflict, and the amount of ammo you can carry.
Enjoy special bonus rounds every few levels and rack up some extra lives, because you’re going to need them if you have any hope of coming out the victor in the epic boss battles. Put your dexterity to the test and enjoy hours of entertaining gameplay.

Reference accessed HERE August 2012

Features

Upgreadable power-ups

150 Levels To Conquer!

5 Bosses To Defeat!

4 Paddles To Choose From!

More Than 30 Bonus Items!

Images & Video:

You can see videos of game play HERE
, HERE
, and HERE as well as a slideshow HERE

Reviews:

I couldn’t find many reviews of the game.
THIS one is from Big Fish Games and includes users opinions of the game.

Conclusion

Actionball is a well made breakout with enough game play to keep any arkanoid fan happy for several days. A combination of 150 challenging levels interdispersed with a mini game and boss battles as well as upgradable power ups makes for a very decent 3D arkanoid/breakout, which I’d go as far as to say is one of the best of its kind. If you like this I highly recommend the original Actionball Deluxe (Actionball plus it’s expansion, with 200 levels of breakout mayhem) from Alawar, one of the very first 3D arkanoids I ever played.

Scoring

Gameplay – 9
Graphics – 9
Audio – 7
Re-playability – 8

Total = 33 out of 40 which equates to approx 8.3 (or 82.5%)

I am a little biased as I used to be obsessed with arkanoid breakouts. At one point that’s all I used to play to the exclusion of all my other arcade games apart from maybe the odd space shooter (shmup). I’ve lost count of the number of breakouts I’ve owned over the years. Totaling over 200 (though I’ve given away many of them over the years, only retaining the best of them (Ricochet Infinity, Acky’s XP Breakout, Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires, Magic Ball 3 & 4, Strikeball 3, Clash, Hyperballoid 2, Shatter plus others too numerous to mention here.

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Suggestions and Help

If you have ANY problems running the game please refer to the FAQ’s over in the forums. You can access the FAQ’s HERE.

If you have any problems later in the day when most visitors have already been and gone, please post an additional comment over in the forums in the thread I’ve created HERE

Alawar has changed it’s free game of the month to Land of Runes. There’s no free Realore game this week.

As far as I know there’s only one Indie bundle still live at the moment Called The Indie Gala VI bundle. There will be another Indie royaale bundle starting in less thanm a week. you can find details of all bundles over in the forums. The Indie Gala bundle ends later today. (Midnight GMT Sunday)

Indie Gala VII

I’d also check the Free Games Synopsis which has most of the games listed in the forums, though I’ve not updated it since before Christmas (week 100), so there are a lot of games not listed (we are on Week 162), but you can find these by sifting through the Game Discussion Forum and specifically looking for the free games project posts which always start with a Week number. There have been several excellent freeware space shooters posted recently since I last updated the synopsis. The list below isn’t exhaustive. i’ve only selected those games that have been posted over the past several weeks. There are loads more hidden in the game discussion forums from week 100 to the present (week 162).

Similar Breakout/Arkanoid Games available for free

There are hundreds of breakouts available on the net. The few suggestions I’ve listed below only scratch the surface but are amongst my favorites. (I have over 200 breakouts in my games library). There have been few new releases over the last three or four years apart from Shatter, Actionball 2, Hyperballoid 2 and Magicball 4 (all the Magicball series had a name change a couple of years ago to Smashball for some unknown reason)

As 3D arkanoids go Egyptoid is reasonably challenging when you compare it to the likes of the Magic Ball series which are very easy by comparison. I’ve listed a few below that you can purchase, though Actionball 2 and Hyperballoid 2 can now also be downloaded for free from MyPlayCity, but despite unchecking the toolbar and home page hijack check boxes I still got a MyPlaycity toolbar installed when I recently installed the MyPlayCity version of hyperballoid 2 (I think I may have given away my activation code for this game some time ago) so I would urge you to support the developers of these games by purchasing them if you can afford to.

Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires

Action Ball 2

Nuclear Ball

Nuclear Ball 2

Gem Ball

There are of course many more arkanoids, two of the best include Ricochet Infinity and Acky’s XP Breakout as well as more recent releases such as Shatter. You won’t find these free unless you go to ‘illegal’ peer to peer sites but you will find lots of arkanoid/breakouts over at MyPlayCity and other free games sites like Gametop and FreeGamePick. Do watch out for the toolbars and home page hijacks when using these sites though. A couple of the ones I list above such as Nuclear Ball and Gem ball may be amongst the freebies though they have had name changes (Nuclear Ball changes to A Ball). Caiman games also has loads of freeware breakouts, almost 150 of them, which you can find HERE. The following has been tagged onto this review from a previous breakout giveaway. you’ll find some repeat statements which I’ve not got the time to remove, so please forgive me for the duplicate postings.

You’ll find loads of Arkanoid/breakouts HERE, HERE (Giveaway forums) and HERE (Caimans – almost 200 2D and 3D breakout games, though the download section is deactivated at the moment for reasons I’ve already mentioned)

HERE

You can also download a previous gamegiveaway Sawnoid every day for free over at Gametop as well as several others such as A-Ball (which is also known as Nuclear Ball), Geometry Ball, Scaraball, Cosmoball plus others, though you will get your browser opening every time you shut the game down. Thankfully this is one of the games they have had for quite some time so there’s no tool bar or home page tick boxes to bother with, but just in case they’ve changed it since I last checked make sure when you are installing the game that you watch each step of the installation wizard.

You’ll also find quite a few (the last time I counter there were at least 13) titles over at MyPlayCity HERE, that now include several of Alawars breakouts such as all of the Strike Ball games (Strikeball, Strikeball 2 and Strikeball 3), as well as one of my early favorites called Actionball Deluxe and it’s sequel (todays’s giveaway) Actionball 2; oh yeah and not forgetting the second Hyperballoid game, which in my opinion was a big improvement on the original despite the first one having a massive number of levels (over a thousand) with gorgeous graphics called (not surprisingly) Hyperballoid Complete Edition (or if you purchase it from Big fish Hyperballoid Gold edition) – the down side w.r.t. the original, was that even with the speed up power-ups, the ball used to go too slow for me, (however; GMMan did create a speed-up mod for me); there’s also previous giveaways (though not Alawar games) such as Egypt Ball and Egyptian Ball as well as several others that you can download for free. I recommend all of the Alawar titles especially Hyperballoid 2 (Which has an editor for making more levels – there may be custom made levels to download via Alawars site, but I’ve not checked in some time) and the original Actionball Deluxe (the sequel also has upgradeable power-ups) and Strikeball 3 (The third in the series is similar to the earlier Magic Ball games {Magic Ball 2} but with better graphics and power ups that are also upgradeable, plus the game is slightly more challenging than any of the Magic Ball series (which for some reason Alawar decided to change the name from Magic Ball to Smashball Frenzy)). Unfortunately the best (IMO) arkanoid/breakouts such as Ricochet infinity, Acky’s XP Breakout, Reaxxion and Shatter are not available for free via any of the free game sites apart from illegal ones. You can purchase Shatter from Steam for £6.99, though during the big sales over the summer and Christmas period and maybe thanksgiving you can get up to 75% off. Both Ricochet infinity and Acky’s XP Breakout have editors and for the former thousands (literally well over 60 000) of downloadable levels for free. There are also free level packs for Acky’s XP Breakout, but not to the same extent as Ricochet. you download the levels for ricochet directly from the game and can upload your own creation from the game as well (which probably explains why there are so many – all the levels are graded for game play, graphics etc and get a score of A to D with +’s and -’s (for example B+; though the best of the best are starred as well)

ps. You’ll find Actionball 2 for free over at MyPlayCity as well as the original Actionball Deluxe

Please note that if you get any games from Gametop or MyPlayCity you need to watch out for toolbar installations and home page hijacks. Just un-check the check boxes. with MPC games you may need to do this every time you boot a game up unless you create a new shortcut from the installed executable.

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A Request for help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

A note about Themida:

You can read all about Themida over at the developers site HERE
Or via other sites that review Themida HERE
? HERE

Basically Themida was added to the wrapper in an attempt to protect the giveaways from those that wanted to keep an executable that could be installed 24/7 and still be registered. It was really easy before Themida was introduced, now, unless you are very adept at coding it’s not so easy to rip the giveaways off, which in my opinion is a good thing as developers will feel more secure w.r.t. Their software isn’t being shared for free on Peer to Pweer sites (though I’m sure you will find most softwares readily available for free if you want to risk infecting your computer with all sorts of malware.

Some community members believe that Themida is going to harm their computers or leave nasty remnants behind once the giveaway has been installed. This is absolutely untrue. Themida is totally removed once you’ve installed the game. It’s only there in the wrapper to (as I’ve already said) to protect the contents.

Community members have quite rightly pointed out that Themida has been used to hide malware from security software. Its that good securtity software can’t see what’s inside, so opening up the potential to infect computers. That said, all giveaways are throughly checked for malware with several anti malware suites. There has never been one giveaway (either game or application) that has been infected since the project started in October 2006. That’s well over 2500 programs, so its up to you to decide whether you trust the giveaway team or not.

There has been some changes to the wrapper since Themida was added because many users were having problems installing the software. Generally this has now been fixed, but some users are still not able to install the games and applications. There is a way around this. Basically you will need to restart your computer and during boot up select the option for starting in safe mode (I know it’s not advisable under normal conditions, but we know that the game giveaway team have throughly tested the game for possible threats, so you are 99.9% guaranteed that the software is safe. Once in safe mode install the game then reboot to normal mode. Before you do any of this I’d create a restore point.

This game is already offered as freeware.
http://www.myplaycity.com/action_ball_2/

…………………….Moderator comment……………………..

You’ll see that I’ve already referenced to MyPlayCity, however the MyPlayCity version has the usual problems such as potential toolbar installations, home page changes and search engine changes, which although not impossible to correct are an annoyance; also all games from MyPlayCity, when closed down will open your browser to MPC’s home page. (Not a bad thing, but still an annoyance).