Bloons Insanity

Bloons Insanity is yet another pack containing levels made by Bloons players. This pack yet again features 50 levels selected by the developers NinjaKiwi out of the thousands that users submitted through Bloons World and was released in June 2009. This pack comes with a twist that makes it different to the other packs though. This one features, by the developers' own admission, the toughest levels ever submitted through Bloons World. Here are some of the key features of this new pack:

Main Game Play

Bloons Insanity is generally regarded by Bloons fans as the game that finally pushed them over the edge and sated their appetite for Bloons. It is, to put it mildly, a game straight from hell. Seriously, the title is scarily accurate, in fact more so than it should be. The game also comes with a disclaimer that proudly announces that this game isn't for the faint of heart and that the "diabolical" levels were the hardest that their "twisted" user community had ever designed. Twisted and diabolical. You could not find two better adjectives for this game.

Nothing has changed in terms of upgrades or Bloon types from Player Pack 5 on. The same monkey still has the darts which are used to pop the maximum number of balloons possible. Also, if it wasn't clear enough already, this game is hard. First you will get stuck on level 1 itself. Even if you do have the requisite expertise, the occasional glitch telling you that you fell 2 short of the target despite popping all the balloons on the screen is like the game being put in a nutshell. You can give it everything you've got and do everything possible to complete it, but you will keep falling short. Next up, you will get stuck at level 4 again, probably at level 13 as well. And not stuck as in "chewing gum on my shoe" stuck, this is "super glue in my beautiful hair after I fell asleep on the damn piano" stuck. Yes, that really is the most accurate analogy to describe this event. Even if you don't lose your hair despite them being glued to a piano, you will certainly have lost them, one fistful at a time, after you're done tearing through them while you play this game.

However, nothing compares to level 49, called "Method". For a group of developers that do a surprisingly good job of naming stuff appropriately, they missed the mark by the width of the Pacific Ocean when they named level 49 "Method". There are many other names for it, like "Pure Evil" and "Just Give Up and Die Already", but "Method" isn't one of them. In fact, "Method" might be the most understated name ever, provided you find a way to connect it to "hellish".

Harping on the name aside, here's how you complete level 49, the toughest Bloons level ever (without any exception): First up, fire at the pin balloon straight in front of the monkey at the other side of the screen with full power. The dart should hit the pin balloon, bounce off of the bouncy wall slice behind and then bounce up from the bouncy wall panel below to loop up and hit the red balloon on top of the inverse L in the middle of the screen having frozen it first. After that, it will go downwards again, hitting another ice balloon on the way before bouncing up off of the same bouncy wall panel as earlier and then hitting the green balloon on top of the three steel wall panels and after that hitting the ice balloon on the other side before hitting the only breakable block wall panel in the steel wall below.

Fire the next dart at an angle of about 70 degrees from the horizontal at 70% power such that the dart goes beyond the wall in the middle and the wall at the back to hit the last row of balloons in the top left and pop all of them. The next dart needs to be fired straight at the blue balloon above with close to full power. Ensure that the angle of firing is ever so slightly towards the right. This dart should pop the blue balloon, bounce downwards, pop the lightsaber balloon straight below and hit yet another bouncy wall panel, bounce up and then loop downwards to hit the bouncy wall panel slice that is placed at an incline at the bottom to hit the balloons in the steel tunnel below, then hit a similarly inclined bouncy wall panel to bounce out of the tunnel and loop up to hit the Pac-man balloon in the steel groove to the right.

Next, fire a balloon upward towards the previously frozen red balloon with about 80% power such that it loops after hitting the balloon and hits the boomerang balloon in the top left of the screen. The third dart should strike the Pac-man at precisely this point, so use the Pac-man to eat the frozen red balloon at the top. Lastly, use your boomerang balloon to hit the top of the first balloon in the second row of the balloons right behind the monkey with about 60% power such that when the boomerang swings back it hits all three balloons in the bottom left of the screen.

Your brains are now officially fried. Level completed. Job done.

Visuals & Sound

Same old plain graphics. Same old popcorn-lust inducing sounds. Thank god for the small mercies that still won't be enough to keep you from going absolutely insane.

To sum things up

This game is wrong. Just plain wrong. It is impossibly hard and will make you slog in the worst possible manner if you're bull-headed enough to try and beat it. Again, just like Player Pack 3, this sucks all the fun out of the game and leaves you immensely frustrated every step of the way. To repeat what has been said earlier about a previous pack, this game makes you feel relieved after you complete a level, not triumphant. And then you have to face up to the mind-numbing tedium that the next impossible level (usually the subsequent level) will bring. All in all, this could have potentially been the best Bloons game ever with a slightly more rational selection of levels. However, it might just be the worst.

Many people have become really aggravated by the difficulty of Bloons insanity, especially at sites like Addicting games where it's rating is a mere 29%, I suspect because of this. Play Bloons Insanity at Addicting Games now.