The Splatters Review (XBLA)

Players may initially think they’ve bought a very short game, as the menu makes it seem like there are only a handful of levels. This isn’t actually the case, as that first batch of stages serve as training. If you can clear them, then you’re ready for harder levels and The Splatters obliges you with unlocking several to play in. These later segments emphasize mastery of each stunt and will require you to either hit very precise shots with each blob, or be fast and accurate to rack up ’combo’ explosions in quick succession. These segments are notably harder than the early stages, so potential players should understand this isn’t a casually easy game. It’s not maddeningly difficult either, but you will have to earn your victory.

This is mostly a single-player affair, though the ’Splatter TV’ option lets you watch how others play and pick up ideas from them. An option to download additional content is also listed, though at time of writing it seems to be mostly full of the usual dashboard themes and user icons rather than any new stages; it remains to be seen if anything of that nature will be released. This isn’t a big problem though, since you get plenty of levels to play in the first place.

The Splatters is a pretty straight-forward game. Precision divebombing of colored blobs into matching bombs is pretty fun, and a forgiving learning curve where each stage has infinite retries means the question is one of when you will succeed, not ’if’ you will. Despite some annoyances, this is a good physics-based puzzle game and easily earns its $10 USD/800 Microsoft Point price. 

This review was based on a download of the Xbox 360/Xbox Live Arcade version, provided by Microsoft.