You are given a nerfed gravity gun that only affects a large ball and you either stand on switches, position the ball on switches, or do both to solve puzzles. The puzzles have a Tomb Raider feel to them, but for the most part are rather simple. You get to use the ball as a weapon bowling over irregular hordes of monkey men, but the campaign is nothing spectacular and often times boring. Survival mode is much more fun and action packed. Too bad it isn't co-op otherwise it might be a game to recommend.… Expand

A review of The PC Game â

The ball is an enjoyable, single player romp. A unique mix of game play and puzzles make the 8 hour campaign well worth the $20. Achievements and trying to find 30+ well placed secrets adds to the replay value. There is really no story to speak of, any combat of note is puzzle based, and there is no penalty for dying except picking up from where you left off. That's actually a good thing, as you can focus on the puzzles, and admire the level design, rendered beautifully with the Unreal 3 engine. The levels tend to be huge, and have a retro feel, which made me smile remembering the first time I saw lava in Duke Nukem 3D. The 4 Survival mini games feel tacked on, but show the same great attention to detail in the level design as the campaign. Easy to beat if you stay between 2 traps and just swing your ball around.. Almost feels like a testing ground for co-op, which would be awesome with some more interesting, unique monsters... They did skimp on the beta testing, as there are a lot of places where you can get "Stuck" when secret hunting. Given it only takes maybe 30 seconds to reload and get back to where you were, and a $20 price tag, I'll give a pass.

The possibilities are endless with the Ball, and I hope to see a sequel soon. Nothing better than having a couple of Balls :)

No idea what SuperTakashii is talking about. The Ball becomes transparent automatically when
appropriate, and you have the option to make that a constant. The graphics are very nice and smooth, maxed out on my I7-860 + GTX470 rig, running XP at 1280x1024

I think Hellbot got confused, as this game was only just reviewed by PC gamer 01/18/11, with an 81.. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/01/18/the-ball-review/… Expand

This game looked so fun. The Ball whizzing around ancient ruins with some epic 3D graphics and puzzle elements thrown in. Yet when I played the game I found something very different to the generic Super Monkey Ball gameplay that I'm very fond of. A commonly overused and irritating gameplay element is the idea of pushing a ball around, trying to make sure it doesn't skid off the edge of the map. This is a horrible, gruelling form of gameplay that seemed to be made to be frustrating and stupid. Why anyone would base an entire game off it is beyond me. The Ball is huge, so you can't see what on earth you're firing it at. The graphics are poor and inefficient, constantly lagging. Even the screen resolution options are limited as if it was created in 2000, when about 4 screen resolutions were used. The game as a whole is frustrating and excruciating. The only place where this kind of game works is when you're in direct control of the ball.

Generally, this game is a complete and miserable failure in most aspects. It had a lot of potential, but the developers almost seemed like they wanted to create a game around awful core gameplay.… Expand

Another dud! Played for mabye a hour. Unistalled and threw away. Nothing worse then a shooter without a gun. Just some big ball you have to drag around. Just plain boreing. PC gamer gave this the action adventure game of the year over assasins creed and Bioshock 2. It seems they need to get out more. Or mabye play a good game now and then.

The Ball is a unique puzzle game that fills a niche left in the gaming community as a First-Person puzzler. The environment is nice, although some of it a bit repetitive. The puzzles are original and gameplay mechanics are focused on just moving though the levels with your ball while completing various tasks, with a bit of fighting. Its worth the money, but doesn't have a lot of re-playability, and something more could have been done with survival, its just a long drawn out fight sequence with traps. Well worth the price though.… Expand

Yes the challenge it's not very difficult..
Yes it"s ugly
and YES IT'S FUN ! A good fps puzzle game :)
If you 've loved Portal i think you may love THE BALL

Anyone writing a review over 6 is absolutely full of garbage and lacking of a brain.
This game feels nice with a beautiful art style and cool architecture (from what I've seen) but lacks any kind of decent gameplay.
This game is a first person shooter with no gun.
You might be saying, "Well yeah, of course it is moron, just like portal 2... kind of"
No. Not like portal 2 at all. This game attempts to incorporate enemies into the game play when it clearly doesn't fit. Heres a good comparison. In portal 2 the gameplay could fit your own pace as you figured out the test chambers and used the environment in a creative and fun way to destroy turrets. Now the ball is absolutely "Genius" when it comes to combat. You **** pick up a ball, and swing it around to kill autistic looking alien things without EVER using the environment. It is the most BORING, STUPID F%$KING THING. S%it, this game is beyond stupid. Also sometimes there are rooms that try to look like puzzles but instead just end up forcing you to just run and dodge the enemies in the room, which doesn't work.
Also the gun makes an annoying sound ALL THE TIME and YOU CAN'T KILL ANYTHING with it.
Tell you what, take the 20 dollars you're thinking of spending on this game, and shove it right up your a$$, you will have more fun doing that then have ever wasted your money on this absolute Sh*t game.… Expand

On paper, this game might seem like a cross between Portal, Tomb Raider, and Twin Sector, but it sure doesn't feel that way when you play it. The graphics are nice enough, but nothing to fall on your knees for. The atmosphere might work if there were a decent plot, but it's basically: you fall in a hole, find a gravity gun and a big ball metal, so "obviously", these must be used to help you press the glowing blue and orange buttons. Oh, and to crush innocent monkeys. The whole thing just feels contrived and meaningless, so there's no sense of immersion and you're left shaking your head and asking, "why would someone have built this place?" You're always aware that you're in a game solving some artificial puzzles that are so simple, if sometimes awkward, that you wonder why they didn't just put the exit right by the entrance. And there's something missing: a hero/star/protagonist. You're certainly not it. In this game, you're nothing more than the guy who's taking the ball out for a walk. Your ability to interact with the environment is nil, except for the occasional blue button. The ball isn't it either. It's just a big, stupid ball that's in your way half the time. Damn thing isn't sentient or cuddly like a weighted companion cube. It's not the gun. All that does is tug at the big stupid ball or push at a handful of things, and usually not the things that you want to push. And it's not the environment either. It has about as much personality as the ball. It's not a completely horrible game. It's pretty and except when you get stuck between two pebbles and are forced to restart a level, it doesn't feel too badly crafted, but it's just not much fun or interesting or exciting. Oh, and I was going to give it a charitable 5, but this pet peeve of mine just lost it another point: the strength of a force field, like gravity, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. That means that if you're half the distance, it's 4 times stronger. If you're 100 times the distance, it's 10,000 times weaker. The gravity gun in this game has a constant strength regardless of distance, so you can tug at the ball from 300 yards as if it were on your lap, but it's too weak to lift the ball out of a hole if you shoot it point blank. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.… Expand

This game had an interesting premise, and looked like a fun game, but ends up failing to deliver. The puzzles are all extremely simplistic and you will never get a sense of accomplishment when you finish an area. The graphic style looked interesting at the beginning but repetitive areas make that feeling go away very quickly. The story is non existent unless you go out of your way to find secrets which will reveal some of the history behind what has happened. The ball controls funky, and will often get stuck on nothing when you try to push it and can also end up circling around you when you try to pull it back towards you. The combat is boring as well, the giant hammer you carry around can't damage them - only push them back a few inches. You'll have to rely on the ball for that, and even then it gets very repetitive quickly, and the death animations of enemies is very bad as well. This title would have been better suited as an action/adventure game. There is basically nothing in this game that is fun and you can find plenty of other, cheaper games that are much better than this.… Expand

´The ball was a pleasant surprise. The campaign takes a little under 10 hours to complete and is surprisingly good. The combat, platforming and puzzles work quite well and the games visual design gives the game a atmosphere that i really enjoyed. The puzzles could be a little more varied but otherwise is the campaign also quite varied much more than i would expect from such a cheap game. Some complaints that i should mention is that the puzzles could be little harder, the combat could be little more varied and that a few puzzles-designs were a little strange. In the end though its still a good game and if you are interested in the genre "the Ball" could be worth checking out.… Expand