What an odd game.
If I were to describe King Oddball to someone, it would go along the lines of “it’s Angry Birds if instead of birds you throw rocks and instead of a slingshot, you use a rock face thing’s tongue to fling the rocks into structures to blow up tanks and helicopters.” – Yeah, that about sums it up. It has already hit the PS Vita and mobile devices, now it makes its way to the PS4. Let’s lick and flick the end of the world.
As I pseudo described it in the last paragraph, King Oddball has players flinging rocks at tanks, helicopters, and soldiers on a board. There may be platforms surrounding enemies or other structures that may be in the way of Oddball’s boulders. Players must throw the stones to blow up the enemies using only the allotted number of stones. If they run out of rocks, the level is failed.
Lick it real good?
Lick up the competition.
Unlike the king of fling, Angry Birds, King Oddball starts the player on different areas of a board. Sometimes he may be to the right of the screen, sometimes lower and to the left. Oddball grabs a rock with his tongue and begins to rotate back and forth. The player must then hit the X button to launch the rock using the momentum, almost like a whip. It does take some getting used to, and offers up more of a challenge than simply aiming from the same spot each time.
When hitting tanks or other explosive things, the rock will bounce in the air and potentially hit something else, including King Oddball himself. If players manage to ping Oddball with their own rock, they get an extra rock. They will also get more rocks to throw if they manage to hit three enemies or more with a single rock.
Grenade beats rock.
There are a ton of levels, each with their own varying degree of difficulty. Each section contains a special mode or challenge series involving special rules, like throwing grenades instead of rocks or trying to finish a level with only one rock. It offers up something a little different, but not by much.
World War Weird.
For all intents and purposes, this feels like a mobile game, which, it is, but it feels a bit lifeless at times. Sure, there were moments where I kept playing just to finish that one level that was taking forever to complete, but it never really changed up the formula. It tries to deviate a bit with the challenges, but those usually don’t last very long. This is the epitome of a pick up and play game. Play for about 15 minuets and put it down. As far as PS4 functionality, there’s nothing really here. Players can send postcards with small screenshots to people on their friend’s list, but that’s about it.
For $7, King Oddball is not necessarily a bad choice. It’s a decent simple game that can be played for a few minutes and then returned to later. There’s a good amount of content, but most of it can get repetitive if players are not careful. It should be played in small bursts. But for fans of Angry Birds and other Crush the Castle type games will get some fun out of King Oddball.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
