The Case of the Lost Marbles

When you unload the dryer and find you have only one blue sock, you can bet that your missing sock fell into the alternate dimension where all broken-hearted socks go. When you can't find your ink pen, the darn thing has undoubtedly teleported into the realm of lost pens. So where do marbles go when they've fallen through the cracks in reality? They, my dears, go to Marble Blast Ultra.

All seventy maps are as diverse and surreal
as anything Escher or Picasso could envision.

When you enter Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox Live® Arcade, you step into a surreal world of hairpin turns, ribbon roads, and inside-out rings. You control a marble, rolling it along narrow bridges, up steep inclines, across slippery ice, and between banging bumpers.

You want to survive all the challenges on the map and end up safely at the End Pad. Your time matters, so keep it tight and clean. The faster you navigate the crazy layout, the better your point score. All seventy maps are as diverse and surreal as anything Escher or Picasso could envision.

Gravity plays by different rules.

A Marble A Day …
Of the three sections in single-player mode, the Beginner section treats you gentlest. Nearly a tutorial, it guides you through the process of learning the controls and mastering the rules and objectives of the game. The twenty levels in this section skillfully build your knowledge as they test your ability to control your marble. These levels may be more forgiving, but they're not necessarily easy, especially once you factor in the time par for the map. If you beat the time par on every one of these levels, then you earn an achievement called "Marble-fu Initiate."

The pace picks up with the Intermediate and Advanced sections. Twenty levels comprise each of these sections, for a grand total of forty levels between them. Each level has its own, unique map and set of challenges to match. As you progress, the map obstacles appear in greater profusion and are more difficult. The marble requires extremely sensitive handling at times to keep from rolling off the edge of the trail.

On one map, you roll your marble from shifting panel to shifting panel. On others, you ride up and down elevator panels, across angled surfaces, and through loops. You maneuver your marble across slippery ice and through forests of pinball bumpers that knock your marble off into the void if you touch them. A few of the maps mimic skate parks where you roll up and down the walls of large half-pipes and can even perform sick tricks. Some of the Advanced levels have names like "Divergence," Cube Root," "Three-fold Maze," and "Schadenfreude."

That first step is a doozy!

Every Marble for Itself
Multiplayer Marble Blast Ultra presents you with one goal: Collect more gems than your opponents. The gems translate into points which boost you up the ranks on the leaderboards. The matches enforce a time limit, so gather as many gems as you can before time runs out. Furthermore, your opponents want the gems as much as you do, so you may have to fight for them. The Blast function (left bumper or X) not only gives your marble a boost into the air, but it sends your enemies flying while you gather your gems. Once a cluster of gems has been harvested, another appears somewhere else on the map. If you lose one, don't despair; go get the next one.

Each of the 10 multiplayer maps offers a unique challenge. As you roll around the different layouts, harvesting gems, you have access to various Power-ups that assist you. One such Power-up, the Super Jump, looks like a spring and allows your marble to jump especially high. Another, the Super Speed Power-up, lends a burst of acceleration to your marble. One Power-up makes your marble exponentially larger in size. To collect a Power-up, roll your marble over it, and then use the right trigger to activate it.  You may only store one Power-up (the most recent one collected) at a time.

Watch for hour glasses through which you can roll your marble. These stop the clock for several seconds and, in some levels, make the difference between you beating the clock and it beating you. Sometimes, these hour glasses hide in difficult-to-reach places, such as on thin ledges high overhead where you can only access them by mastering especially challenging moves.

An acolyte of the marble moon cult pays homage.

To Each Marble Its Own
The developers, GarageGames®, understand that players want, perhaps even require, the ability to customize their multiplayer experiences. When you set up an Xbox Live® game, you can choose Quick Match, Custom Match, or Create Match.

With Quick Match, the system drops you into the first available game. With Custom Match, you establish your criteria for the game you're seeking. You decide the maximum number of players in your ideal game (from two to eight), which of the 10 maps you want, and your Gamer Zone and language preferences (Mine or Any). Then, the system drops you into the first available game that matches your criteria.

You host your own match by choosing Create Match. You set the parameters for the game you want to play and let others come to you. You set the number of players to accept (from two to eight), how many of these are Private Slots (from one to seven), and which map you prefer. At that point, the only thing left to do is play and rack up the points for the leaderboards.

I may have to give up on that missing blue sock, but this amazing marble dimension I've discovered makes it all right.

Article by Angel Leigh McCoy