Features
- The first 3D puzzle game designed and available for GameCube
- Novel puzzle concept makes players think in three dimensions
- No two games are ever the same
- Special power-ups and bonuses deepen gameplay
- Play cooperatively with a friend in or head-to-head battle
- 7 different modes of play, providing many hours of fun
Gameplay
Quite honestly, we don't even know if we can accurately call ZooCube a puzzle game. It loosely combines a vague storyline with a Rubick's Cube type design. The designers at PuzzleKings must have grown tired of seeing the same old variations on Puyo Puyo and Tetris when they decided to conceive ZooCube. The concept is fairly simple, really. Using a cube (six-sided, of course) you must connect shapes of deformed animals to all of its sides, matching them to bring the various creatures back into their original form. Matching up two is all that is required.
The depth begins to factor in when you begin "balancing" and using power-ups. Balancing is basically a technique where you put one shape to each of the six sides on the cube. Want to get more risky? Balance two or three shapes to each side. You will then find there are power-ups and "goodies" that you can use to garner more points. Each animal contains a certain "goodie" inside of it that can be gotten when another animal shape collides with it. This is just another way to rack up points, and another way to lose your mind. Power-ups such as rockets can be used to clear your cube of shapes and gain a few points in the process. Adding yet another layer of management and control, you'll be able to cycle through the shapes connected to your cube with the R-trigger. So, if you have five shapes stacked on one side and see that a match is impending on one of the shapes down the line, you can cycle it to the top to gain the match. Or, depending on the lineup you can even manage to hold two shapes in the same line and cycle them next to each other with R for a match.
In terms of overall presentation, ZooCube is lackluster. The menus are rather ugly and there just doesn't seem to be a lot of effort put into the art design. The initial load time to boot up the game is rather ridiculous, and even the Tutorial mode just isn't what it should have been. It's basically a quick video that shows you the basics of ZooCube instead of being an interactive session to ensure you really know what you're doing before you dive into the game. However, there are a number of respectable modes available. There's the Classic mode, the main one, Blind, where you must match shapes without their color and texture, and Knockout and Knockout Blind, based on stages where your cube is pre-stacked with shapes to clear out. Of course, no puzzle game is complete without a multiplayer mode and ZooCube supports up to four players. You'll be able to play competitively and cooperatively in the various modes. Basically, in cooperative mode you're both earning points for a high score, and in competitive mode you will be matching up the shapes to earn more points and send blockers into your opponents' screens.
As you can probably discern, there's a lot of thought that went into ZooCube. We can certainly respect PuzzleKing's efforts to offer up a fresh idea, but in the end it's usually the simplest concepts such as Tetris that keep your level of addiction constant. ZooCube is suited for only a niche audience. Only the most patient and accepting players will want to pick up ZooCube. For the rest, this may or may not be a rental. From the description you should be able to form an opinion of your own. It's an interesting concept, but simply isn't as addictive as you'd wish it to be. Gamers should also note that there is no connectivity with the Game Boy Advance version.
Graphics
The efforts to inject an appealing visual style into ZooCube are a failure by all measurements. Art design is obvious and boring, and just has a very amateur look to it. The short FMV sequences that push the story along are also rather pointless and ugly. The actual 3D settings you play the game in are also uninventive and dead. The only real-time rendering going on is the actual puzzle pieces and cube.
The backgrounds are totally pre-rendered, and the most you'll see is the setting of the sun, some changing shadows, and reflections.Honestly, we didn't even realize the backgrounds weren't real-time initially, as they're so unmoving. If you're going to pick up ZooCube, don't count on it for any visual flare. What's there is more utilitarian than anything else.
Sound
As with the visuals, the sound design is very utilitarian. You have sound effects of the animals mooing, roaring, chomping, and everything else, and overlaying each level theme is a different song. There's not a lot of production value here, but at least the songs are decent. They're not going to change your life as with Neil Voss's compositions for the N64 version of The New Tetris -- in fact they don't touch it -- but they're still palatable.