Marble It Up! Ultra (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (EU): August 17, 2023
- Publisher: MARBLE IT UP LLC
- Developer: MARBLE IT UP LLC
- Genres: Puzzle
- Also For: Computer, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
As a longtime fan of games like Monkey Ball and Kororinpa: marble-based games appeal to me, a lot, so when I was asked to check out Marble it up! Ultra I was instantly invested!
Marble Collective has followed up its 2018 predecessor game known solemnly as "Marble It Up!" with Marble It Up! ultra, the turbo-charged sequel/reimagining, granting you an entirely new slew of tracks, puzzles and frantic challenges to --hopefully-- keep you busy for the next five years!
The premise is simple. Get your ball from point A to point B in as little time as possible. Theoretically, this should be uncomplicated, but almost immediately you're thrown some pretty tricky curve balls and the learning curve swings fully upright pushing your infuriation levels beyond 110% in under 30 of the 100+ stages. I honestly wasn't prepared for the frantic insanity: but I genuinely loved every second of it!
Starting out easy, the game effectively demonstrates how to roll around in 360-degree freedom with the Left Stick, jump with the Cross button, use powerups with the Square button, "Blast" with Circle, and Rewind time with the Triangle button: yes I said "rewind time".
Sprawling across 6 main zones, 4 bonus zones and 10 multiplayer maps there is a lot of bang for buck in this title. In total, there are over 100 levels to tackle, and throughout each progressively more troublesome stage, you are also gifted various power-ups that grant you the ability to moon jump, speed up, fly further, explode, and dilate time to slow the timer down: the latter you can combo together for some really trippy scores!
The visuals are a mixture of Monkey Ball and F-Zero GX, which is a pleasure to absorb with your eyeballs. It's simplified for speed, its vibrant, colourful and full of interesting level design that feels more valuable than the sum of its parts, and bearing in mind that this is just £24.99 for some truly taxing gameplay and pretty attractive visuals, this game punches in bunches and certainly gives those Monkey Ball games a run for their money.
It's not surprising, given its 21-year pedigree from the minds of Marble Blast and Marble It Up!, that this title builds upon their already strong genetics in every way and still adds online multiplayer into the mix too! With five online modes including Gem hunt (team or individual), Zombies, Sumo and Soccer, there is something for everyone and I really enjoyed getting into some ridiculous situations with randomers online, though if you wanted to you could make a private lobby and secure it with a passcode.
I really enjoyed the look and the overall feel of the game because they alter so drastically from level to level. From very Rainbow Road-esq-looking forked roads with some mind-bending anti-gravity areas, through to Mario 64-like cogs-and-gears-themed platforming sections with flipping surfaces and tricky obstacles to overcome. You either need to think fast, or take your time and think it through before proceeding, but the game really punishes you either way if you choose incorrectly, and those target times: it takes a cool hand to navigate some of these without absolutely losing it by catching your balls on a rogue ledge, or skidding off the frozen icy surfaces into oblivion.
The only thing I didn't enjoy so much is the repetitious music track, which is initially pumping, euphoric, and pacey: but ultimately repetitive and annoying in my honest opinion. At least you can turn it off and listen to something else whilst maintaining the in-game SFX.
I only had one level give me some really gritty framerates while testing it out, and that was notably Chapter 5's "Dire Straits" after I resumed play, got shunted off, and continued from a checkpoint. Apart from that the game flows incredibly smoothly across all its various playstyles, whether it be platform focussed or speed centric.
In one level, during a weekly challenge, I was attempting to speed through the level in one Kazio-style speed-run, however, the platforms notably increased in steepness as I progressed into it and I noticed that the angle that you jump became increasingly less perpendicular the more you scaled it. Needless to say, I had to scale back my ambitions and really read the level from an almost analytical standpoint, finishing the stage in a whopping 3 minutes, before I could even attempt to fine-tune my movements and attain that sub-one-minute goal, let alone refine it again to hit the 40-second challenge for the top spot!
The weekly challenges are a fantastic way to keep you enthralled and entice you in for another go, and another, and you guessed it: another! Each week there is something to seriously test you, and it's a brilliant slow-release, continual method, to extend your pleasure particularly after you think you have completed it all, unlocked the hundreds of customisations and top scores, smashed the 29 trophies, and pinged that final platinum award!
This game allows you to take liberties. It wants you to explore, bounce out of bounds and take some ricocheting, seat-of-your-pants-skimming risks in order to clench those super quick times. I managed to find rhythm, flow, and agility in timing jumps, tactfully bouncing, and purposefully ramming myself into things to slow down quicker, change my orientation, and carry on. The sense of exhilaration is astounding, and the sense of achievement when it all comes together is truly a next-level endorphin rush!
I really adore the stressful nature of an overarching time crunch mixed with heart-palpitating reaction timing required to successfully slice a fraction of a second off each run, and if you like that feeling of being on edge yet fully exhilarated for hours on end: then this is the adrenaline-pumping ROLL playing game you need in your life! Highly recommended!
Verdict
- Fast slick gameplay
- Tonnes of varietous stages to beat
- Heaps to unlock, including a top hat and monocle
- Several additional challenges each week
- Multiplayer modes are a blast!
- You have to get really good to procure all the goodies
- Goodies are purely cosmetic
