Ace Shot! is a curveball game like no other

[Palfince]

Ace Shot! - Duong Nguyen
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Price: $1.99
Lite Version: Here
Played On: 2nd Gen iPod Touch
Rating: 4/5
Discussion Thread: Here



I'm a big fan of Vector Pong and Curveball games and Ace Shot is like no other. When I first saw this I was slightly confused as to what it was but I took the plunge and bought it and I'm extremely happy that I did.

Ace Shot is split into two sections Play and Practice. Play has 50 levels and Practice has 35 levels. You start out with just a few levels unlocked but as you play and complete a certain amount of levels in the Play section you will unlock more. The Practice section includes versions of the levels in the Play section but without time limits so you can practice the games stress-free before trying to complete them.

The levels themselves are like mini games based on a Curveball game and are extremely fun. Most of them involve keeping the ball moving and not missing while doing other things such as: Picking up dots in the right order, solving mathematical problems at the same time and avoiding the red balls while hitting the white ball (this ones a killer). The developers video below shows off a couple of the levels:


Youtube link | Pop Up

I really love the graphics of Ace Shot they really suit the game and their vector look is great. I also like the way the background changes colour each time you start a new level, it's pretty cool. The perspective is also pretty good and the 2D images (paddles, dots, etc) work well with the 3D ball/s. The menus are also very clean and look good (which a lot of games lack).

I really like it when games include music and SFX because it really adds to the whole completeness of a game, so the developers of Ace Shot did the right thing and put in great SFX and brilliant music.

The controls of a Curveball game have to be perfect and Ace Shot's are almost there. The accelerometer controls work really well and the tap-to-calibrate-at-any-point is really good. The only bad things are that you are stuck with just accelerometer controls and there is no sensitivity adjustment (although I think the sensitivity is perfect some people might not) so touch controls and a sensitivity adjustment option will be greatly appreciated.

I only have two other minor problems with Ace Shot. One of which is the amount of spin you can put on the ball, I think that it's a bit too much. Most of the time I'm moving the paddle about a lot so I put lots of spin on the ball and it ends up all over the place which is really hard to control. This also means that some levels (12, 16 and 20 in particular) are extremely hard to complete compared to the levels near them. So I think the spin you can put on the ball should be toned down a little bit and some of the levels should be made easier (less squares in level 12, 16 and 20).

Overall Ace Shot is a great Curveball style game which has a ton of levels (85 if you count the practice levels) which will take quite a long time to complete and extremely cool graphics and pretty good controls. It really lives up to it's $1.99 price and is currently a solid 4/5.



Screenshots: