ChuChu Rocket!

"One of the best puzzle titles to come out in years..."

If you want a solid title that not only challenges your mind with its extravagant 1-player puzzles and crazy, smart action with its multiplayer, then CCR should already be in your library! If you're not convinced yet, read on...

Graphics: 10/10

An awesome top-down perspective in the whole game mixes frantic and thoughtful 2D gameplay with some of the smoothest polys and framerate ever seen. It all mixes together for not a trace of a jaggy or skipping frame either in the puzzle mode or the crazy multiplayer, and it works fantastically. Everything is rendered and designed to be exactly as fun and weird as a game about launching space mice into rockets should look.

Sound: 8/10

Sound effects are frantic, yet somewhat tiresome after a while. There isn't much of a music selection either, but what there is in there is fun and catachy, and you'll end up finding yourself humming it to yourself.

Control: 9/10

Control takes a little bit of getting used to at first, but once you get used to it, its all very smooth, and you'll learn some useful manuvers quite naturally. You have very clean and easy menus, and you control your arrow with the analog stick, and use A, X, B, and Y for the arrows, naturally depending on which direction each button is facing. i.e. Y is up arrow, X is left arrow, A id down arrow, and B is a right arrow.

Story: 7/10

Pretty average, only saved by the fact that it is super crazy. Your job is to place all of the Chu Chus (space mice) into rockets so they can escape the planet and avoid being eaten by the evil space cats the Kapu Kapus! Since they're panicky, the Chu Chus are very dumb, and constantly run in a striaght line, only turning right when they hit a wall. That's why you must use the arrows to help them into the escape rockets and avoid Kapu Kapus! Like I said, very average, but delightfully weird nonetheless, exactly what I expect form Sonic Team.

Gameplay: 9/10

The 1-player mode plays as a very nice and challenging puzzle game, where you place a certain number of arrows around a plane to get all of the mice on the board into the rocket, while avoiding cats, holes, and traps. There are a lot of levels, so there will be plenty of time spent on the single player mode, unless you get tired of it and quit. However, the highlight here, is the multiplayer mode, in which hundreds of mice and dozens of cats constantly spurt out of generators and you face off with 4 other players to see wo can get the most mice in the rocket before time runs out. If a cat hits your rocket, you lose one-third of the mice in your rocket, so needless to say, a lot of strategy is involved to master the multiplayer mode. Another neat little innovation of this game was that is was the first Dreamcast game ot support the modem, with an online multiplayer mode! It was extremely fun if you were there to see it, and I still have meetings there with players every Wednesday night. Some say the lag of arrow placement was a problem in the online play, I believe, however, that it made the game a lot more fun and challenging, especially against other players. Also, for good measure, there are 1 to 2 player co-op puzzles in the offline mode. A refreshing mix of puzzle and action, the gameplay here really plays with your brain a bit.

Replay: 10/10

Multiplayer is great with friends and online, and with 100+ single player puzzles, its definately worth the price.

Buy?:

You sould be able to find this now from $10-$20, and its definately worth the buy. With or wiuthout online play if you don't have it, its still an all-around solid title.

Overall: 9

Lots of action, lots of puzzles, great with friends. This one definately steals from Worms as the king of multiplayer games. Try it out soon!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/08/01, Updated 06/08/01