Madballs in Babo: Invasion Multiplayer Hands-On

Madballs was a ridiculously popular toy craze back in the 1980s, and now developer Playbrains is helping to revive the phenomenon through the medium of video games. Madballs in Babo: Invasion is due to be launched on Xbox Live very shortly, and we recently got to take the game online and play against the developers in Canada to find out more about the multiplayer package.

The basic idea of the game is to roll your Madball around each level and shoot at enemies. However, the huge number of different Madballs and weapons means that there's a lot of strategy involved. The larger Madballs are heavier and unable to fit into certain areas, but they're less prone to recoiling from the bigger weapons. Conversely, smaller Madballs are more agile, but they fly around at such a fast pace that sometimes they can be difficult to control. Each Madball also has a special ability, such as flight or a short burst of speed, and each enemy is susceptible to different types of attacks, so you'll have to switch weapons according to your situation.

The online component is certainly comprehensive for an Xbox Live Arcade game. It includes 16-player online support, four-player co-op play, and 21 multiplayer maps for different player counts. Developer Playbrains is aware that many people may only play online, so it's making sure that all the extras can be opened in both single- and multiplayer modes, so you'll unlock new weapons and Madballs every couple of minutes as you play. There are 50 different unlockables in total, and there will be an achievement for collecting them all.

We got a chance to play many of the multiplayer modes during an online session with the developer. The first was Assault mode, which is a straight-up team deathmatch, and the second was Capture the Flag mode. These are concepts that should be familiar to anyone with multiplayer shooter experience, but Madballs does have a couple of unique modes up its sleeve. The Avatar mode uses your Xbox Live avatar and turns it into a Madball, allowing you to face off against other avatars online. This is a first for Xbox Live, although it's worth noting that your avatar doesn't shed blood--it bleeds confetti instead. What's more, the higher your kill streak, the bigger your head becomes, making you a more obvious target for people to shoot at.

Finally, Invasion mode lets players take turns to build a level piece by piece, as in the board game Carcassonne. Once you've collectively designed a template and dropped in bases and power nodes, the game automatically creates a level based on the elements the group has selected. In theory, you'll never play the same match twice in this mode, although it's a shame you can't save one of your creations if you really like it From what we played of the game, Madballs in Babo: Invasion is shaping up well for its release, which is encouraging, because Playbrains claims it could be out within a couple of weeks. The company hopes that Microsoft will decide on a price of around 1,200 MS points for download, and it's already planning to release downloadable content for the game shortly after release. Be sure to check out our full single-player hands-on of the game for more information, and check out our video hands-on to see it in action.