Zuma for the iPod - It Ain't That Bad...

I got one of those newfangled 5th generation iPods around November of last year.  I know that iPods are trendy and overpriced, but regardless, I've generally been pleased with it.  It's nice to drop some TV shows on it to watch during my lunch hour.

Anyway, Apple announced a couple weeks ago that they're selling games for the iPod through the iTunes music store.  I saw that they had one of my favorite "casual" games for sale, Zuma.  I've never really purchased anything through iTunes (not a fan of their ridgid DRM), getting the bulk of my music from ripped personal CDs, eMusic, and um..., other places, but I thought this might be the time to try them out.  I figured Zuma might be a good fit for the device, seeing that the iPod has a circular scroll wheel.  If you don't know what Zuma is (where have you been?), you can check out the basics here.  So, I dropped my $4.99, downloaded the roughly 20MB file, and sync'ed it up to my iPod.

How'd it fare?  The game certainly exceeded my expectations.  It looks great.  The resolution on the small iPod screen is nice, and the colors are vibrant.  If you've played the PC or 360 version, it looks identical (sans the widescreen).  The scroll wheel works very well with this game.  I was initially worried about how well it controls, but it handles much better than I expected.  Some shots are a little tough to make because you don't have quite the same level of accuracy that you do on the PC/360, but the gameplay seems to be slowed down just a hair to compensate.  The notorious difficulty is still there and it still has all 20 stages (each with multiple levels) of the PC/360 version.  The sound is identical to the PC/360 versions, with the looping South American Tribal tunes and clicking balls sounds reminiscent of a pool table.  One benefit this version has over the others is the cost - $5 versus $10 (360) and $20 (PC) - the only difference is that the iPod version doesn't have the "Gauntlet" mode the other versions have.

If you have any interest in Zuma, have a 5G video iPod, and need something to do while listening to music other than playing "Brick" and "Music Quiz", definitely check this out.  It's a reasonably long game (it'll take hours and hours to play through), looks good on the iPod screen, and controls well on the scroll wheel.