None of these ball-centric effects and power ups ever really shakes things up too much, however. Maybe it will blow up all of the balls near it, give you super-accurate laser aiming, or temporarily set the whole bead necklace line moving backwards. Every sixth ball or so will be some brand of special ball. You don’t just have red, blue, green, and yellow balls to contend with. It’s simple, but bit by bit, PopCap adds new wrinkles to the game, and you begin to learn that it all isn’t quite as simple as it might seem.

If you let them get to the end of the track, you lose. The balls all snake along together like a bead necklace, following a track that you can see. While various levels throw kinks and oddments into the starting formula, the general idea is this: shoot out balls to destroy incoming balls (as always, connect at least three to make them disappear). The game is all about timing and racing against time. Your goal is to shoot the little balls as accurately as possible, out of your mouth and into a long line of advancing balls (all, coincidentally enough, sporting the same colors as the balls that you are constantly regurgitating).

The game revolves around the ludicrous adventures of your character, a giant frog that spits colored balls out of his mouth. It is certainly not lacking in PopCap’s trademark quality and carefully orchestrated charm. It feels like something you might not want to pay for. Zuma’s Revenge feels much more like a web game (and you can play it for free on several sites) than any of PopCap’s previous retail and downloadable games. Gone are the complicated Tower Defense tactics of Plants vs. After all, gone are the multiple characters, special powers, and complicated maps of Peggle. At first glance, Zuma’s Revenge feels a bit more insubstantial than PopCap’s other offerings.

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