Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey

Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey translates the franchise's beloved gameplay successfully into the VR space. With a ton of devious puzzles and a few different modes to play around with, there is plenty of content here to keep bubble poppers busy for a while. The slightly twitchy aiming can be difficult at times, but overall the game is exactly what fans might expect.

Puzzle Bobble is back with a brand new game and this time, it's not only in 3D; it has PlayStation VR support so here's Vacation Odyssey.

If you have fond memories of early Puzzle Bobble games, you’ll get a sweet nostalgia kick out of Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey. It looks fantastic, and with 100 campaign levels alongside an infinite and duel mode, there’s a generous amount of content for its modest asking price. There’s a lot of fun to be had, no doubt – but you’ll not be able to shake the nagging feeling that it’s just not quite as enjoyable as its 2D counterparts.

Even if Bubble Bobble started out as an arcade platformer series, its puzzle counterpart, Puzzle Bobble (which used to be known as Bust-a-Move back in the day) is arguably a lot more famous. I remember that pretty much every single system up until the 3DS used to get at least one version of the franchise eventually. Then due to Taito’s demise in the 2010s, we stopped seeing new entries coming from them, as well as new Space Invaders and Darius games. Now that the company is making a comebac...

Vacation Odyssey has a charming visual style that hammers home how cute the mascots of Bubble Bobble are. The bubbles are all clearly defined colors, which helps to make each shot feel fair and informed. The backgrounds are great too, as the chill beaches and tropical locales really sell that Summer feeling, along with the catchy tunes. The volcano and storm levels are visually appealing too, but those tropical levels just hit that Super Mario Sunshine vibe that I love so dearly.

Hey, everyone knows Puzzle Bobble — you remember, that casual bubble-popping Tetris-like that we’ve all spent hundreds of hours playing in one form or another over the years, but none of us will admit to ever having heard of? And yeah, it’s pretty fun. So you know before you even play it that Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey isn’t going to be terrible. Whether it’s a great game… well that’s another story. And whether it even needed to be made in VR? Even more questionable.