Bub is beside you with your next ball at the ready and animates fantastically, as if he were ripped right from a kid’s film, and your slingshot gun carries some fantastic details with little gears and rotors reacting to just how hard you pull back on the launcher. Long shadows may blanket the landscape around you during a setting sun which also casts a light glow over Bub and your gun, making for some very immersive moments and I couldn’t help but just stop and admire my surroundings and gun as it reflected the fading suns light. You’ll find yourself playing on docks with an ocean view, ruins, cliff sides and plenty more areas, all taking place during different times of the day which is very noticeable by the stunning lighting effects at play. Puzzle Bobble looks really good as you are essentially taken on a tour of the island, visiting a variety of locales with the cluster of bubbles floating ahead of you. The longer you play, the more obstacles you’ll encounter. There are 3 modes of play with the campaign being comprised of 100 stages, infinite mode let’s you play indefinitely until you fail or duel mode which has you facing off against another player online in some very frenetic efforts. These can let you blow up a huge cluster of bubbles, change their colors or spin all of them around. When you accrue enough coins, you can purchase single use power ups that can make any individual stage drastically easier with the initial cost being quite high though subsequent purchases cost much less. Bubbles with stars in it will destroy any bubbles of that color with ones with skulls slowing down your efforts by slowing down Bub while others change the colors of surrounding balls, blow up others and a few more additions as well. You need to chain at least 3 balls together with any balls that are touching those 3, and are of the same colour, will pop with the goal being to eliminate all the bubbles to get the core and destroy it. Bub will toss you the next coloured ball and have 1 queued up which you can swap with a press of the ‘X’ button should that colour be of better use. For those familiar with the series, the base controls are the same save for how you fire your bubbles as instead of just a button press, you now need to place your next bubble into the top of your handheld launcher and then pull said bubble back, like a sling shot.

Puzzle bubble game play online