Developer/Publisher: Super Happy Fun Fun
Genre: Puzzle
Price: $1.99
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: A fine way to satisfy your match-3 quota for the year.
Pros: Klax reborn! The arcade-style progression mechanism has gone underused as well.
Cons: Controls are loose at times; OpenFeint would be preferred to just Facebook integration

To say that I am jaded on the match-3 genre would be an understatement. Frankly, I can’t stand the very concept of match-3 at times, especially as it’s often very derivative. And there’s just so many of them, and it feels at times if you’ve played one, you’ve played them all. The last match-3 I picked up prior to Star*Burst was bitFLIP back in December. I can’t even name the last match-3 I played before that. Years of Bejeweled on my old RAZR phone have jaded me as well, I suppose. Thankfully, Star*Burst came along and reminded me why the match-3 genre is so huge, when done properly it can be exceptionally fun.

Star*Burst is a modern take on the 1989 arcade puzzle game Klax, with designer Mark Pierce helping to design this game as well. You have tiles that come at you down a conveyor belt that you catch on a paddle, that you then launch into the 5×5 grid above, trying to match 3 tiles horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. It’s kind of like Columns, except you’re working with firing one block at a time, and have to worry about catching the incoming tiles as well. You can also send tiles on your stack of up to 5 tiles back onto the board – but they will come back at you, so you will have to deal with them eventually, and launching them back onto the playing field could come back to nip you in the bud if you get 2 tiles coming at you simultaneously, for example. It’s a strategy to use wisely.

Star*Burst doesn’t have an endless mode – it has a level-based progression where you have to achieve a certain goal in a level without letting the board fill up, or by letting too many tiles fall to oblivion. You can drop up to 5 tiles per life, but every 5th level gives you a warp point that replenishes your drop count, and lets you choose to either play the next level, or jump ahead 5 or 10 levels, with a large point bonus given for having the cajones to jump ahead in the action.

Star*Burst’s number one issue is the controls. Conceptually, they’re great. Everything makes logical sense – you drag or tap the paddle around to pick up the tiles that fall (with a column of light showing you where your tiles will launch), you tap the paddle to launch a tile, and you flick down on the paddle to launch a tile back onto the playing field. The issue is that the controls are a bit loose and inaccurate – I often found myself positioned on the wrong column when dragging around the paddle, which feels like the better way to control the game to me than just tapping to the column you want to go to, but it often leads to missed blocks or mis-fired tiles. As well, tapping to fire a block often won’t fire it, sometimes moving you elsewhere. D-pad and buttons would likely work better for this game, but the touch screen controls work fairly well once you learn to play with a light touch.

However, it says a lot about a game when I struggle to put it down to finish writing about it. It’s the ultimate first world problem for game reviewers – fauxductivity. You’re doing something under the guise of being productive, like playing a game to review it, when you’ve really already made up your mind about the game, you’re just playing it to confirm what you want to say. Or that’s what you’re telling yourself. Even considering that you’re already writing a video game review instead of something else that you could be doing that’s “actually” productive, this is fauxductivity at its finest. Of course, you probably won’t be playing this game for the critical analysis. You will be playing this one for fun, and you certainly will have fun with Star*Burst.

Star*Burst offers achievements (with irreverent cards to collect by unlocking achievements) and the ability to post high scores to Facebook, along with special bursts to warp far ahead in the game. Sadly, there are no true online leaderboards – the use of a service like OpenFeint would go a long way in this game. It could be worse, sure. With a little control tightening and OpenFeint, this game could be really stellar. As it is, it’s a very fun puzzle game, especially for fans of the classic arcade puzzlers, and Klax in particular.