Kachinko
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| Kachinko

The Japanese are absolutely nuts about pachinko. Walk through any town or city in the land of the rising sun and you'll come across any number of pachinko parlours dedicated solely to the pastime. For the uninitiated among you, pachinko is kind of a cross between pinball and those penny falls machines that you see kids ploughing their loose change into at your local arcade. It's loud, brash and hypnotic, with the outcome based almost entirely on luck.

In Kachinko (do you see what's been done there?) the developer has taken the central, balls-dropping-through-pins premise of pachinko and introduced a skill-based puzzle element. In many ways this fusion is a successful one. However, there are noteworthy issues that stem directly from the nature of the game it's so indebted to.

As with pachinko, Kachinko sees a steady stream of balls falling through its 2D, pin-strewn game grid. The first twist of note is with the balls themselves. They're multi coloured, you see, and it's your job to stack them up according to colour in the numerous vertical dividers at the bottom of the grid. All that is required of you is to push left and right on the thumbstick to shift these dividers from side to side, and gobble up the balls as they fall.

Line up three or more balls of the same colour, either horizontally or vertically, and in time-honoured puzzle game tradition they disappear. Set off several such moves in quick succession and you have yourself a combo, which leads to bonus points and a number of special conditions.

It's all extremely easy to pick up, and before you know it you're slotting the correct coloured balls into place and racking up the combos. And that's part of the problem – it's all a bit shallow. There's a nagging sense of randomness to the gameplay and a feeling that you're not entirely responsible for your fortunes – whether they be good or bad.

Whilst this imparts a certain frantic charm to proceedings, it also taints a lot of the satisfaction when you pull off a large combo and conversely leads to a lot of frustration when a divider overfills (thus ending your game). In short, the game occasionally feels like it's playing itself. As mentioned earlier, this can be traced back to pachinko's intrinsic reliance on luck. In Kachinko, though, it tends to interfere with the game's more thoughtful aspirations.

Efforts have been made to empower you (or distract you, if we were more cynically minded) via the power-up system. On regular occasions you will receive warning of an imminent special ball which, if lined up with a standard ball of the same colour, will impart a positive effect on the game field. These take the form of removing whole groups of balls from play, amongst others.

Conversely, there are negative-effect balls that punish you if you don't manage to nullify them with a same-coloured ball. This undoubtedly makes things more interesting, and in conjunction with the frantic gameplay can conspire to overwhelm a player if they're not careful.

This is all backed up with the sort of garish, Day-Glo presentation so reminiscent of a gaudy Japanese pachinko parlour. Nevertheless, developer Max Gaming Technologies has wisely kept the field of play simple and uncluttered. This is vital when you're having to keep an eye on both sides of the screen simultaneously.

Like pachinko, Kachinko is an instantly appealing, deceptively simple game of no little luck. Unfortunately it also shares its inspiration's lack of ultimate control and, subsequently, depth.

Kachinko

If you're after an instant, sugar coated fix of puzzle action which will test your multi-tasking abilities more than your brain cells, you could do a lot worse than Kachinko
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Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.