Erm. Ballistic is a puzzle game. The barest minimum in graphics and sound are used here, with bleeps, blips, a panic sound, and lots of little ball graphics of varying colors, interspersed with the rare bombs and bullets. Don’t expect much, bub. Puzzle games are all about gameplay.

Mmm. Ballistic is an addiction on the level of Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move. You control a spinner in the center of the screen, and chains of differently colored balls come down a spiral towards you. You’ve got to shoot the balls in your spinner into the string, and when three or more of the same color meet, they disappear. Setting off chain reactions both stops the action temporarily and clears the chain. Simple as hell, and addictive as hell as well.

There are three game modes -- Panic, which is basically an Endless mode that tests how long you can last, Stage, which is my personal favorite -- you’ve got to clear a certain amount of balls from the loop before they get to you, and the number and difficulty increases exponentially as you beat the levels, and Versus -- a very Bust-A-Move mode where the damage you clear is wrought on your opponent.

It’s really a game you need to see in action to realize its simplicity -- shoot a ball, clear a chain, watch them tumble. Nothing could be simpler. And man, is it fun. You will spend hours and hours playing this game, wanting to put it away because it’s just too much, and then picking up the controller again after you promised yourself that you wouldn’t.

Easy to learn, impossible to master. The Stage mode will tear you a new one just when you thought you got the hang of it, and yet you'll keep coming back. You know how Puzzle Addiction is. No matter how well you did, you realize some flaw in your play that will let you get just one step further...

There’s this spinner, see. And it shoots balls when you press a button. Nothing could be simpler. The controls are tight, unlike the sometimes sloppy controls of Bust-A-Move for the PSX. The gameplay is terribly solid. The graphics are bright but dull (a contradiction, perhaps, but I’m sure you understand), but it -is- a puzzle game, after all. It’s not quite Tetris level -- what is? -- but Ballistic will provide you with many hours of challenging gameplay. If you like puzzle games, get this, or at least give it a try. It’s terribly entertaining, but you may want to clear time on your schedule for it -- it promotes early morning gaming like Tetris once did in our lives.