#IDARB Review

"Pixel Dunking"

Campaign

#IDARB brings a beautiful combination of classic pixel design, unlimited customization and hashtags. That's right, the infectious online hashtag system has been brought into the game allowing simple commands either tweeted or thrown out from twitch streams. These simple comments can entirely change the field of play to make the game that much more exciting like a rick roll, flooding water or even some much wider spread distractions. Now this can all be tweaked within the menu, but it's so much more fun to stream the game and have people play around with what's happening in your game. Designed as a couch coop experience at a primary you compete together or against with your friends and can even take the sport online which will be went over better below. There are many options for quickplay and even some single player which is a slight story for you to experience as your team grows and competes against more wild characters. From ducks to bacon you can battle some really out there creations which brings us to the customization options that are insane. Starting from the beginning you create your own characters which can be anything within a pixel space and even scanned in through QR codes with that magical Kinect. I did have some issues with this at times, but it did work across all the custom areas as each can have codes scanned in. Next we have a custom logo section for you to make a symbol unique to you across all the matches you play. The third faction is a tune that you create using a basic keyboard to have the team show up in style. This all stacks together eventually with the custom team as each separate area can be put into it for unique play all the time. Though if taking the time to make things isn't your thing, there are plenty of game specific teams to choose from which were hilarious and well done.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer space can be done in insane 4v4 play which has just mass amounts of stuns and pixel characters flying across the screen. You even lose sight of things at times, but it sure is something beautiful. I did play solo most of the time as I don't have a ton of people available always which makes the matchmaking slightly disappointing. Instead of creating full teams or even smaller matches you get matched with those of the same local party. It's just not as fun competing as a single which was disappointing. It works well, just could be better to have full games and I will also mention that private matches are also available for you. Within online matches you also get a weird awful half-time which never works well, but that's the spirit of it I suppose. Aside from that I also found it weird that matches take forever to leave afterwards and then the game just resets back to start.

Gameplay

#IDARB is a crazy pixel arena space sport that has you hopping around with the hope of getting a ball into the opposing goal before they do. This can be achieved through knocking the ball away, being sly or stomping on their heads to stun them for a few seconds. From there the ball must be carried over to the post and shot from some wild distance with bounces to create point multipliers for the best possible shot. There's zones and combinations to create as you really need to make each shot count which mine rarely seemed to do despite others popping goals in 24/7. They probably just have all the angles lined up or something, but it's crazy seeing this action going on. The pixel world looks great and very frantic as player counts rise. It's a simple setup to play without much difficulty and the differing modes just play around this game.

The Conclusion

#IDARB is a ton of fun to play and even better with larger groups. Every single thing can be customized within and the set group of custom teams representing many other games along with companies is great. It's nice to see so much support for a smaller title from these large scale teams and the reception from people that are watching streams is exciting. This has to be the most unique use of outside variables in a game ever, its cleverly creative and something that other titles need to implement. Get ready for the most intense space action as you blast the ball about and score some sick point multipliers if you can. The songs around the game are hilarious and that credits sequence was perfectly well done, it's worth viewing people! This review covers the game well, but I honestly haven't gone through the recipe creation section you unlock with achievements as cooking really isn't my forte.

#IDARB Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Plan of Attack

Rating Overall: 7.8