Aqua Aqua

"Could this really be the most fun you can get with water, without getting wet?"

Intro.
Aqua Aqua- Wetrix 2 is one of those unusual puzzler games that gets you hooked almost automatically. The game involves you, a god-like being saving the cute little multicoloured characters called the Aquas. To do this you will be given 4 levels which travel through the different eras in time and one final, bonus futuristic level. In every level you will be given a large block of land and your aim is to get as many points off it as you can.

Story
When the planet was created there was no water so there was no life except for four monsters. Sparsit was a dragon which could scorch the land. Slackbridge was a troll that could shake the land and cause earthquakes, Bounderby was a frost-lord that could freeze the land and Gradgrind was a rock champion that could fire rocks at the land.

The Supreme Being (you, the player) saw that the planet was bone dry and was displeased. He said that the planet must have water and created four aquas to bring water and life to the planet.

Now the four monsters were angry. They hated water and life so much they complained to the Supreme Being. The being told them that it is his will that there should be both good and evil, light and darkness, water and land and that he would not favour one side or the other, for balance is the natural way.

He then said that the four monsters could challenge the aquas for the ownership of the planet but since the monsters were strong and the aquas were weak, they could only be challenged one at a time. If the aquas keep a natural balance then he would protect them. If the monster attacking failed to attack three times, the monster in subject would be banished forever.

The four monsters therefore retreated. Billions of years later, the aquas learn of the balance of the forces of nature which brings life and beauty to the planet.
So far the monsters have not appeared since that time...so far...

Graphics and Sound
The graphics for Wetrix 2 are quite good. The way the water flows as it hits the ground mimics the way water normally would quite well. It is quite a bright and colourful game and effects such as the rainbow and the aurora are pretty good. In terms of sound there's a track of BGM which changes per stage; each track taking aspects of the era the stage is set in. The music doesn't become too annoying since you're focusing on the game not the music, but it serves as a nice accompaniment to the game.

Game Play
Wetrix two is a very involving game which requires the gamers full attention at all times. With all the different power ups and items at hand, it makes the game quite unpredictable and exciting. However, the only reward you get from each stage is a high score and if you manage to survive 3 attacks on story mode, another stage to play on. So in terms of player satisfaction, there's not much to gain from it. The game is quite difficult as each piece of land, water and bombs ect. Changes the playing field dramatically and one piece in the wrong place could mean doom for the aqua. In terms of controllability, it makes it a harder game since there is no rotatable camera to change the angle, only default camera angles that you can get by pressing the shoulder buttons. This makes placing land where you can't see it very well rather difficult and could mean you mess up your entire landscape.

To start of with, you need to create walls and enclosures for water to fall into. At the side of the playing screen there will be an aqua inside a tube, if any water goes over the side of the land, the tube will start filling up with water and eventually if you let things go too out of hand, the poor little aqua will drown. When you have completed the wall/ enclosure you wanted with the pieces of earth you are provided with, you will now have to place water somewhere in the places you set up for it. The more water you put in one place, the higher its level will rise and you will eventually have to make a larger wall around it to contain it.

At the bottom of the screen there is an earthquake meter, if you put too much pieces of earth on the provided land, the meter will be full and an earthquake will start, wiping out almost all of your hard work and allows the water to flow freely off the edge of the land, so you don't want that to happen eh? To stop this disaster you are provided with anti-land tools such as the downers which, as the name suggests, makes the land you put this thing over go down and also makes the earthquake meter go down slightly. Also there's the bomb which, when placed over a piece of earth, will completely obliterate the target. This however is a sort of a double-edged sword since if you have no where else to put the bomb and you place it in a water inhabited area, it will blow a hole in the land and allow water to seep through it, and, unless that hole is covered by a piece of earth quickly, the aqua in the tube will drown.

To get rid of unwanted water and to get some points, you are given fireballs which evaporate a selected lake of water. If any water has collected in the tube where the aqua is, the level of water inside it will go down when you evaporate a large amount of water.
To gain tonnes more points than you would just normally get from evaporating water you can get lake mates. These little creatures form when you create a small lake where the wall around it is two blocks in height all around it is filled with water. These multiply you scores when you evaporate water. You can have as many lake mates as you want but 2-3 of them are a good amount if you still want a good supply of water to evaporate.
Another score multiplier is the rainbow, this occurs when you have more than five lakes in total.

As time goes on in the stage, the level will increase and the falling tools that you use will fall down quicker and other things will drop down as you progress. One of these things is the ice cube. This object falls ever level after the first. When this object falls, it freezes the lake that it falls on to, stopping it from being able to be evaporated and any water that falls on frozen water will freeze too. To bring water back into its liquid form you need to place a fireball over the frozen water to melt it. Or you can alternately use downers to make a small part of the ice disappear, but the water that you had frozen disappears too, so maybe that's a job left to the fireballs.

When you eventually get to level 5, mines will fall down into any of the lakes you have made. When these drop into the water it's a good idea not to evaporate the lake which they are in. This is because when you evaporate the lake with the mines in, the mine explodes, leaving a hole in the land which will have to be filled with a bit of earth.

When it comes to power ups, this game offers a unique system called the Bingo Card. At the bottom of the screen there is a 4x4 celled square called the bingo card. Each cell in the card represents a part of the land. When you evaporate water in that part of the land where the cell in the bingo card is empty, an item will fall from the sky which is then kicked into the bingo card by the aqua roaming around the land. When you get four items in a line you will hear "Bingo!" and you will receive a power up according to which line you got bingo in which lasts for one minute. If you plan this out correctly you can get two bingo power ups at once.

There are 4 modes of play in the game. The first being a training mode which comprises of 8 quick lessons that gets you to grips with the different aspects of the game. There's the quick puzzle mode which basically involves everything above and you stay in the stage for as long as you can and get a high score. There's also story mode which involves you doing almost the same thing except each stage has it's own monster. When the monster is about to attack you are given a 60 second warning and a point quota which you will need to fulfil to withstand the monster's attack. Each stage has three monster attacks and the total amount of points you need to get per pre-monster attack increases too.

The final mode is the Vs. Puzzle mode in which you still need to do the same thing but the bingo card, instead of giving you a power up, can launch a deadly attack on your opponent. To do this you still need to evaporate the water but each cell, instead of having an item, will have a nought or a cross according to which player you are. When you get either four noughts of four crosses going across the bingo card there are a number of random attacks that are unleashed against your opponent. These include upper attacks, which rains down pieces of earth onto your opponent, downer attacks, which does the same thing but with downers, fireball attacks, water attacks, ice cube attacks and bomb attacks.

Play Time
Since there are only 4 stages and one bonus stage in the game there isn't much to go for apart from the high scores. It wouldn't take too long to complete this game but it is a game you would want to go back time and time again to get a better score.

Points:

Good:
-Very involving.
-Poses a difficult high score challenge which you will want to go back to time and time again.
-Very Bright and colourful and doesn't get boring easily.

Bad:
-Not much to gain apart from a few more levels and high scores

Recommendation
Overall, this is quite a good game. There's always room for improvement in your high scores so you'll never get the feeling you've completed it too quickly. If you're interested in good puzzlers then this is the one for you. However, this offers quite a unique style of game play to the puzzle game genre, so I'd recommend that you rent before you buy. I don't know many ways you can have fun with water without getting wet, but this seems to be the best one I know.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/06