Bikini Balls

Where do you like to play your mobile games? Snuggled up in bed? At the dinner table? On the toilet? Speaking for ourselves, we like to play them on the tube. Commuting on the London Underground is a torturous drudge at the best of times; the only way to survive is fire up some digital crack and then smirk at your fellow passengers.

In the case of Bikini Balls however, we had a bit of a problem. We can't play the game in public because it's chock full of birds with their boobs out. And it's not even classy erotica like Fiesta or Razzle, oh no. We're talking poor man's pornography, rendered in cartoon pixels and garish colours. Stare at this stuff for too long and you really will go cross-eyed. As will your fellow passengers.

Ostensibly, this is a Breakout clone; that's to say, you use a paddle to deflect a ball against breakable bricks. To add a bit of variety to the proceedings, some bricks randomly release power-ups to collect. These range from gaining an extra set of balls and juggling with all three simultaneously, to having a pair of rocket launchers strapped to your paddle so you can take aim at bricks which are difficult to reach.

Meanwhile, along the top of the screen is a trapdoor where baddies appear and loiter with intent. It's hard to describe what they look like; germs is probably the closet approximation. You can attempt to kill them off for extra points, provided there's a clear path to strike at them. It's worth doing if you can; if left alone they'll release objects on you that look like balls but are actually bombs.

The scantily-clad girls feature in the background to the action, sort of like wallpaper. Other than providing a basic form of reptilian titillation for hormonal adolescents, they serve no other purpose.

The more blocks you remove, you more flesh you can see, until they're all gone and it's all on display, and you move on the next stage to start the process again. But even this gimmick proves hugely counter-productive, because the ball you're bouncing to destroy the blocks is frequently obscured by the background imagery. Should you be trying to follow the ball and paddle, or ogling the baps?

It's a tough choice, because whatever you decide, you're going to end up looking like a loser. Then again, players shouldn't have to make that choice. It's a basic principle of game design that you should be able to clearly see the area of play without any obstruction. The eye candy - such as it is - must remain purely secondary. If a game fails on this one simple principle, then it's veering very close to being a complete failure. Then again Bikini Balls is always about the (lack of) bikinis not the balls, at all.