Some say I don't like retro gaming, but I'd like to take this opportunity to state that that is simply not the case. The first time I played Switchball, the first game I thought of was one of the golden oldies, Marble Madness. Yep, I spent many a day on my Master System, rolling that little 2D ball around the increasingly hard 2D levels. Okay, so I never completed it, but it was good fun nevertheless. Ah, happy memories.

Switchball is an Xbox Live Arcade puzzle game that involves, yes you guessed it, rolling a ball around a level while navigating obstacles to get to the finish. It sounds like a copycat game, doesn't it? However, what sets Switchball apart from its retro equivalents is the way the levels are designed and how you use the environment to complete them. I suppose you could call this game 'Marble Madness meets Mouse Trap'.

You see, Switchball doesn't just use physics to make everything move and feel like its real world counterparts - it also helps you to finish the levels. For example, you're rolling your nice shiny white marble along a path when you come to a pile of wooden crates blocking your route. By rolling backwards a little, then charging forwards, you'll easily push them out of the way and continue rolling on your merry way. Then you'll come to another pile of crates, only this time, they're made of metal.

To get through these types of obstacles you have to give your marble a little makeover by rolling into one of three different 'ball changers', which change your sphere into a different material, such as metal for the metal crates. The other things you can change into include an air ball (complete with a power up that can inflate it with helium so you can float to higher platforms) and one called a power ball, which has a resemblance to a certain Guilty Spark from the Halo series. Using this power ball, you can roll into generators, which will give you a certain power up, depending on what colour generator you happened to pass through. The three power ups you can use with this ball are dash, which propels your marble forwards at a faster speed than usual, along with magnet and jump, but I don't think I need to explain what effect those two have!

Each of the game's thirty levels are full of these kinds of innovative puzzles, which really get you thinking at times but can also get very tedious when it takes a while to realise how to get past some of the harder ones. Thankfully there are checkpoints scattered around each level so that if you do mess a puzzle up, or fall off the edge you only have to travel a little way before you come back to the point where things went awry. Apart from being tedious at times, sometimes the camera can decide that it doesn't want to be your friend when you most need it, regardless of whether you're using the free camera with the right analogue stick or one of the two other camera settings, which can be changed with a simple press of the Y button.

Another thing that really makes Switchball stand out from the others on Xbox Live Arcade are the visuals, which are top notch considering that the game only costs 800 Microsoft points. Developer Atomic Elbow didn't cut any corners when it came to the graphics, which make full use of HDR lighting and motion blur in each of the five different worlds. Yep, from clouds and lava to caves and ice, every world looks polished to perfection, with sunlight and moonlight reflecting off the platforms and each of the four different balls.

Along with the impressive eye candy on offer are the equally impressive sounds, which are some of the best around. As the standard white marble rolls along and gains speed, you can hear the wooden planks rattling underneath it, as well as the clang of metal barriers. Although the sounds in Switchball are good, the music can get very repetitive and, although quite catchy, wears away your eardrums with surprising speed. However, the best sound I heard throughout the whole game has to be that of the air ball, which really sounds like one of those plastic footballs that thinks it's a boomerang as soon as it comes into contact with any kind of wind.

Having realised that thirty levels isn't a lot, especially seeing as the game is the same every time around and the only reason to repeat them would be to try and beat the timed games to get the rest of the achievements, a multiplayer mode has also been added to further diversify the gameplay. The multiplayer includes a race mode, where you race another player through the levels to see who finishes first. There''s also a cooperative mode that includes four extra levels where you need to work together in order to succeed. Now this is all well and good but, at the time of writing this review, I haven't come across any games actually being hosted or even people wanting to join, which really is a shame, as the whole co-op concept of the game could be rather good. Maybe instead of adding multiplayer for the Xbox Live version, the developers could have added a few extra single player levels, although that could still be the case, thanks to the option for downloadable content.

A very addictive and innovative gameplay experience awaits anyone willing to part with their precious Microsoft points to purchase Switchball, although a little bit of patience is required with some of the harder levels, which some gamers may find tough to get to grips with. Switchball is the kind of Sunday afternoon game that you can play while waiting for Sunday lunch instead of doing that last crossword with your Nan or Grandad. Although you'll have to be extremely patient to try and find a multiplayer match, if you do manage to find a game, or you have a couple of mates who've also picked it up, I'm sure you'll have a decent multiplayer experience too - let's just hope that the developers do actually make use of the downloadable content feature.

Reviewed by Graham Hill for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).