Zez Provides Short Bouts Of Match-Three Ultraviolence [Review]

Recently, I was playing my favorite match-three game, and a thought occurred to me.

“This is all well and good,” I said to myself. “But it could really use a lot more punching.”

And then, because I am apparently some kind of wizard, I found Zez, an oddly-named puzzle title that has you clearing groups of three (or four) robots in order to propel a cat with a boxing glove farther into the sky so that he can inflict the maximum amount of damage to his opponent in the ring below when he comes crashing back down to Earth.

I had a fever dream once with a similar premise, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun.

You start by launching your cat into the air with a well-timed tap when the on-screen meter is as close to full as possible (think the swing-power meter in every golf game ever). Once he is aloft, a 4×3 field of different, like, things appears, and your job is to clear at least three in a row either horizontally or vertically. Kitty can punch the columns to cycle through them and line up his targets.

Clearing four items at once gives you a speed boost, and later on, chaining together enough speed boosts throws you into a Frenzy in which your matches throw you even higher and award you more coins. You have a minute to get as far into the air as possible before your fighting cat begins his descent, and the higher you get, the more damage you cause upon landing.

I had a fever dream once with a similar premise, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun.

More damage means more coins and more experience to unlock additional gloves and abilities, and that’s where my main issue with the game comes in.

Zez is free to play, and it doesn’t shove in-app purchases in your face, and that’s good. But in all the time I spent playing the game, the most coins I amassed on a single run was somewhere around 300. Meanwhile, the first unlockable glove costs 10,000 coins. So while the rounds are short, it takes a lot of them to get anywhere, and that could be a bit of a drag later on. Of course, you can always buy more coins with real money to speed it up, but that really shouldn’t be the only way to make meaningful progress in a free-to-play game.

Game Name: : Zez The Good: Quick, fun rounds with tons of replay value and one of the silliest premises imaginable. The Bad: Very, very, very grindy. The Verdict: The balance between grinding and the in-app purchase shortcut is seriously out of whack, but Zez remains a fun game that will “one more round” you into some very sleepy work days. Buy from: App Store

[rating=game4]