"Pop Goes the Puyo"

Puyo Pop Fever is Sonic Team's addition to an already long existent series of Puyo Pop titles that have been found on many consoles, although it really only vaguely succeeded within Japan. Of course, the game itself shares some gratitude to the classic Tetris, given that even a blind man can see that Puyo Pop Fever is at its roots a standard Tetris-clone.

What is a Puyo exactly, you may be asking. Well, the game's manual offers an explanation, which skips around actually identifying exactly what, if anything, the Puyo are. Making a rather safe assumption, the Puyo are the various coloured bubbles that you pop.

Gameplay:

You control sets of differing amounts and colours of Puyo, or rather, the colourful bubbles that slowly sink down the screen, and try to line them up in sets of 4 or higher. Once you get 4 of one colour touching, the Puyo will pop. Pretty simplistic, eh? And should the bubbles fill your screen up to the menacing Xs at the top of the playing area, then you lose. No big surprises. Well, from there is really where everything else spawns off into forward planning. To actually win against your opponent, setting up combos is a necessity. The objective here is to remove lines of Puyo in such a way that the cascading bubbles that fall as a result of having the line removed also pop as a chain reaction. The more chain reactions you make, the harder things get for your opponent, and vice versa. As you'll notice, the bigger the combo will result with more clear Puyo plummeting down your opponent's screen.

So, what's wrong with that? Well, nothing was wrong with Kirby's Avalanche as such. Or Dr.Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Or the other Puyo Pop titles. In fact, they all play upsettingly similar, which in itself is a problem. There's only so many titles a gamer needs where you navigate bubbles down a screen to set up a series of combos to absolutely annihilate your opponent, and then do it all again. Compelled to continuously unload titles, video game makers have to provide something new and fresh; a gimmick in so many words. Puyo Pop Fever offers the Fever Mode as its basis of appeal. Basically, Fever Mode comprises of you having built up your Fever Meter to its maximum, followed by having your entire side of the screen wiped off and then smothered with loads of new bubbles. On the outset, this sounds pretty lousy, but a closer look would reveal that all the bubbles are stacked in such a way that removing a single line will eradicate relatively everything in one shot, which in turn would make things difficult for your opponent, to say the least.

Two player mode is rather one-sided in its basic style. Once a player enters Fever Mode, the game is pretty much over from that point if you can make a few basic combos from those that have already been set up for you. So, whilst this may make things more fair for new players, how about those of equal skill? As soon as Fever Mode is activated, you're pretty much guaranteed the win, so it starts to become second nature to start intentionally missing combos and just making basic lines so you can reach Fever Mode quickest with the character Oshare Bones, the flamboyant skeleton.

The game seemingly accounts for such flaws with the addition of Classic Rules matches, as well as Trap Rules. Classic removes such features as Fever Mode, and plunges you in a one-on-one match. Better than Trap Rules, in which Fever Mode's power is just lessened, which makes having it there near pointless. For those who still like to see lots of bubbles popping though simultaneously, then Trap Rules probably does offer more.

Besides the standard one player mode and two player mode, what else is there? Well, a Fever Mode, which is just Fever Mode placed in a short duration of which you try to get the best score before your time runs out. Gets kinda dull after a while, as there is no real immediate challenge involved in completing a set of ready made combos.

Once that gets boring, you can try Mission Mode, which will give you a task to complete involving popping Puyos. Once you've completed that, you move onto the next task and so forth. Tasks are not infinite as such in their originality, and not only will they crop up more than once in the one play through, but they'll also crop up in other Puyo games. Still, it plays better as a lengthy attempt to see how long you can cope with the computer's requests before the bubbles stack too high.

And finally, the last mode on offer is Original, which is just plain ol' Puyo Pop from all the other Puyo games. It's dedicated mainly to achieving high scores, given the lack of an opponent. Almost a practice mode, but still, it's nice to have a mode with longevity.

Difficulty varies on the mode, and then confusingly, on the difficulty set as well. So you can have Easy-Hard or Hard-Easy, which are both completely different. For the most part, the 1P game is pretty easy, but towards the end of the harder modes, the difficulty will curve sharply from being easy to quite difficult. One or two matches being considerably more difficult due to the computer working in a mechanical fashion where it is able to set up 8-10 combos in one move, but it's nothing you won't be able to handle after a little practice. If you work quickly though, the computer is pretty much at a loss.

Story:

Truly awful. Some nonsense about this girl Amitie wanting to become the best magic user. So, what does she do? The obvious solution is to...pop bubbles. Erm, right. Sadly, you are forced to use this same character throughout nearly all modes, making it difficult to practice using other characters to hone their rather subtle differences. The story mode doesn't even extend its bizarre story to the include all of the other main characters making their own journey; you are designated a set character for each course, and are forced to not only follow whatever garbage they are churning The other problem being that she does get pretty annoying after a while, both with her excited squeals and random burst across the screen.

Honestly, the game would have worked infinitely better without the pointless introductions and cutscenes (which can thankfully be skipped). At least the blatant attempt at pretending to have some sort of plot wouldn't have hurt so much. Regardless of how many people say that a story in a puzzle game doesn't matter, the fact of the matter is that there is one, and it's terrible. It certainly doesn't ruin the gameplay (although the characters you choose from do become annoying at times).

To be as fair as possible though, I'll give it credit for being an original plot. It certainly achieved that much.

Graphics:

Nice, smooth and shiny. The game has a nice feature where the camera will zoom in on the action when you make a chain, displaying the game space in a more 3D style than to its normal flat existence. No slow down occurring when two players enter Fever Mode at the same time, which is good, and both sides manage to move with a fluid grace. Beyond that though, everything else is pretty much same old. Different coloured bubbles on a grid. There's not much more they can do, so it'd be unfair to criticise when we are yet to see anything that much more spectacular than this in terms of puzzle titles.

Menus and such aren't anything special, but they're not bland or anything. Just your standard "Pick an option" style with a few minimal detail pictures.

Characters, even the dead ones, are brighter than the sun, and you are likely to be blinded momentarily by the sheer amount of light colours blinking across the screen. A tone down on the initial title screen wouldn't have been too bad; I can hardly bring myself to stare at it for more than 5 seconds before I begin cringing.

Sound:

Music is decent. Nothing spectacular or anything; just a nice flowing background tune that puts the pressure on. You can listen to tracks in the Options Menu if you want, but there's not much that you would continuously listen to for quality.

Voice acting is painful. In some cases, it's funny at first. Then, after hearing the same quips around 30 times, not even Oshare Bones saying "Talk to the hand" is still remotely funny. Some characters don't even need to be heard 30 times before they become annoying; beware, if the stress of battling difficult opponents and keeping up with the insanely quick Puyos doesn't get to you, then the shrill pitched squeals of the rather feminine cast will.

Overall:

Gameplay: 8/10
+ Nice Puyo-popping fun.
- It's not an especially original venture.

Story: 3/10
+ Cutscenes can be shut off.
- Story Modes force upon you certain characters.

Graphics: 8/10
+ Decent graphics.
- Perhaps too bright and feminine at times.

Sound: 7/10
+ Nice background music.
- Voice acting makes your ears bleed.

Total: 7/10

I managed to get a copy for $20 AU (which is about $5-$10 US), which alone would increase the overall rating score by 1, purely for value, but I can't guarantee such a low cost across the world (or that you'll actually find a copy).

If you're a Puyo Pop fanatic, then this game will probably be in your collection already. If you like puzzle titles and don't own any other Puyo Pop style games, then this game is also for you. However, if you are unsure and already have a Puyo Pop game that you still play, then you may want to reconsider a purchase of Puyo Pop Fever. There is not an awful lot of new things to warrant ownership of this title. First time Puyo Poppers, give some consideration to a purchase if you happen to see it at a store (particularly if it's quite cheap), but veterans may end up feeling a little disappointed if they are expecting much new content.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/05