The best way to describe ‘Zuma Deluxe’ is that it is a horizontally viewed puzzle game in the spirit of ‘Bust-A-Move’ (which was vertically viewed) where you must shoot and clear an ever increasing line of balls heading towards a pit that will end your game.

Gameplay.

Zuma tests your reflexes and hand-eye coordination, as you aim to shoot multi-colour balls at a stream of coloured balls flowing through a channel towards a pit. The objective is to aim your stone frog and shoot a colour ball out of its mouth and insert it into a group of the same colour making up at least a three-ball group or more, which in turn then disappears from the screen. Both sides of the vanishing group snap together and if they (the balls) in turn make up another group, this will cause them to disappear which could create a chain reaction and make some big combos; otherwise the balls will keep on flowing. To help you throughout the levels are power-ups such as ‘Rewind, Explode and Accuracy’.

There are two game types; Adventure and Gauntlet. In the Adventure mode, your objective is to clear each level of the temple, with each level progressively getting harder by including more colour balls and tougher maps. In fact, nearer the end of each temple you will have to try and clear two streaming lines instead of the usual one. Once you have completed all the levels for that temple, you automatically unlock the next temple. There are nine temples in total plus a secret temple. Gauntlet is slightly different in the fact that you get to choose what map you want to play on with a never-ending stream of balls flowing until you are overwhelmed and lose. There are four stages of difficulty and after you have reached them the first time, you are able to restart there at a future date.

Now, as you can see there isn’t much to this game and you could think that this would make it boring, but I beg to differ, in fact I think this is one of the best arcade games on the 360 due to its fast addictive game play. Each level should only last a maximum of 3-5 minutes and the fact that you don’t have time to breathe whilst playing brings a certain satisfaction when you complete it in record time.

Graphics.

The game looks great whether you are playing in HD or not, with a nice variety of maps for each temple and the balls are colourful, but that is all I can say due to this being only a puzzle game.

Sound:

There are tribal drums to give it that Aztec feel and a nice ditty tune that could become annoying in the long term whilst playing the maps. There are some nice explosive sounds and a couple of other noises when you activate a power-up but that’s about it in the way of sound.

Longevity:

Surprising enough this game in my opinion has quite a long lifespan due to the toughness of the higher temple levels and maps in Adventure and Gauntlet. Also that you can return to the highest level you have achieved so far in Gauntlet and the difficulty of earning the Zuma achievements can only enhance this attribute.

Round Up:

Overall this is a fine addition to the 360 arcade and is well worth the credits. This game proves the argument that game play is more important than graphics. The addictive nature of this fast, action puzzle shooter will make sure you come back time and time again to break up those long sessions on any other 360 title.