Pop Adventure is a free game on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 that is similar to the Bust a Move series. You have to in series of puzzles match the colors of the bubbles in three or more in a cluster to pop them out and advance to finish the level.
General Gameplay
From the gameplay it is very similar to the Bust a Move series in which you have to line up your canon and shoot matching bubbles to progress to the next level. With some power ups it will help you in later levels in which you have to face harder angles to shoot the bubbles to progress.
Audio
The game audio has the basic bursting of the bubbles, and some background music, but nothing special here. If anything the music for the background is the same for all of the levels that we have played. There is no 5.1 surround sound support and it works well for the gamers in your family that use headphones. In our playtest we did not see anything offensive with any audio from within the game.
Visuals
The game is very colorful in the structure of how things are laid out. As the game does not support any colorblind mode, but it is not needed as the colors show up fine on the screen. The characters are detailed and everything from a large Smart TV to smaller sets all can be seen without any issue. Parents please be cautious as in our play test we did see some over saturation of some colors, so you may want to adjust the colors on your Smart TV to make sure that you are seeing everything ok. In our playtest we did not see anything that would be offensive to any member of your gaming family.
Controls
Controls for Adventure Pop are very basic, a shoot button, a swap bubble button, a special option and also to rotate special items is the main control settings. In our play test we did not run into any issues with any controller settings and there is no need for any special type of controller to play the game. However one major concern that came up was trying to control the crane that shoots the bubbles as some of our gaming family members has a very hard time aiming correctly as it felt very still when shooting the bubbles. Again this may be to the fact that the game is designed in this way… (More in our Family Review section)
“Adventure Pop is game in which free is really not free when you have to make micro transactions in order to progress.”
Delivery
One of the many issues that we had with Adventure Pop was that most of the gamers that we did the play test with either got frustrated with the difficulty getting really hard fast or the fact that the crane that shot the bubbles were not going where they needed to. Another thing that came up as a concern is that the boss battles went to fast for a game that was pacing you for slower gameplay. The other concern that came up was after progressing through the game, it reached to a point in which you were put into a position to purchase special power ups to help you but trying to beat the level without then was almost impossible (More on this in our Family Friendly section) which at times frustrated our gaming family members. Adventure Pop is more of a clone of the Bust a Move series or even Peggle but not done as well as the other mention games.
Family Friendly
One of the concerns that we had with Adventure Pop was the fact that the game has micro transactions, now micro transactions for most free games go hand and hand but when it becomes a “pay to play” model this is where it becomes a concern. During our playtest, we notice that we were able to progress through the game without making a purchase and after getting so far into the game it seems like the game is forcing you to make a purchase, well this did not sit well with our gaming family. For parents to be strong armed into making an in game purchase to continue to play is a very bad business model. Again this is not against the developer making this decision to go into this route but it sets a bad tone for both gamers and parents to feel that in order to progress further into the game that they have to make a purchase. This also asked the question on how many more “Pay to Play” levels are there in the game that are set up in a similar manor. Another concern is that for parents that do not have security set up for their consoles, how easy would it be for a child that is playing the game that is unsupervised to make purchases towards the game without knowing how much that the cost can add up. This was very alarming when our playtest as we can see that the cost of the micro transactions can easily add up more than the cost of a retail game.
Closing
Adventure Pop may be a free game, but there is nothing free about it. Best to purchase another style of puzzle game and avoid this at all cost.
