In addition to the single player, there’s also multiplayer over Xbox Live. The multiplayer isn’t bad, but I have spent more time in single player trying to beat my friend’s scores than the multiplayer.

Multiplayer usually involves being the marble with the most gems instead of racing for the best time. The gems magically appear in a maze and some gems are worth more gem points than others. When time is up, the marble with the most gem points wins. As mentioned before, you can use the Marble blast mode by hitting the left bumper button. This will bump your opponents off the map if you do it correctly, but you are limited to using it based on how full your meter is. It’s a neat little feature but I still prefer single player to multiplayer.

Marble Blast Ultra is yet another game in a surprisingly good run of Xbox Live Arcade games. For the 800 point cost, you get a very fun game that is great in little spurts when you don’t have time for a 30 minute gaming session. Be careful though, rolling the marble is so addictive that 30 minutes will go by before you know it!