Cube Blitz Review (Wii U eShop)

Every once in a while, you play one of those games where it just makes one wonder how exactly it got published in the first place. Usually, this is due to a woeful lack of polish or because some part of it could be argued as being fundamentally broken, be it due to core game mechanics or unforgivable performance issues. Unfortunately, Cube Blitz is one of these games. While the basic idea of the gameplay is solid enough, it's so mired in mediocre presentation and design that the entire experience is difficult to recommend.

The premise is quite simple and works relatively well, in theory. A crane on the top of the screen runs back and forth, occasionally and randomly dropping one of three block types: Gems, Stones, and Industrial Bricks. If too many stack up and cross a line placed higher up on the screen, a timer counts down and it's game over if you can't clear the blocks in time. Points are acquired when a gem block touches the ground and it's up to you to tap on stone blocks to clear them out of the way. However, industrial bricks cannot be destroyed by any amount of tapping, meaning that they can only be destroyed by using one of the four bombs available on the side of the screen.

The key problem with this is that bombs take several minutes to recharge and, because block types dropped are seemingly picked at random, this makes most games virtually unwinnable. Most of the times we made a run at trying to clear a level, it ended with the screen being filled predominantly with industrial bricks that were impossible to clear because there were no bombs left. This was not due to poor judgement earlier in the round either, as there were multiple situations where the screen rapidly filled with industrial bricks. One would think such a glaring and easily fixed flaw in the basic game design would've been weeded out prior to release, but alas, this completely derails what would've otherwise been a rather enjoyable puzzle game.

On top of this, a pause button is nowhere to be found, instead it's been replaced by an instant quit button. This means that if a player were to tap the "+" button expecting to pause the game for a moment, they'd instead be devastated to see the game kick them back out to the main menu screen, completely and unapologetically wiping any progress that'd been made. Sure, the Home button still works to pause it, but many a game has been lost by an accidental tap of the wrong button. Such an obtuse design choice comes across as extremely lazy and shortsighted; a basic pause menu with the option to either quit or resume would completely alleviate this issue, and it wouldn't take a significant amount of effort to implement.

Presentation is lacking as well, going with a barebones approach that can be described as functional, but not much else. Upon booting up there are four "modes": Regular, Medium, Hard, and Insane, with the only difference between any of these being a marginally adjusted drop speed for the blocks. It doesn't make any difference in the long run, as drop speed is still positively glacial at its fastest. There's also a tab on the bottom that fills players in on how to play the game, but it's riddled with poor grammar and completely omits some valuable information, such as how a tap of either of the shoulder buttons speeds up gameplay. Perhaps this was omitted for a reason, though, as too many blocks on screen deals a big blow to the frame rate and causes the game to jitter and chug along.

The repetitive, somewhat jazzy background music rounds off the whole package by being mostly unexceptional and irritating; it's the kind of stuff you'll likely be muting during extended play sessions.