Polarium

"Worth the $10 pricetag? Indeed, but not much more"

Polarium is probably a title that you will overlook because of its pricetag of $10, at most places its sold. Though in reality that's so far from the truth as Polarium brings such a simple formula and makes a great bargain bin title. While the general rule of thumb with bargain bin title's is to run for your life, this one proves the general ideology wrong.

Like most puzzle games, the games are usually simple yet challenging to ones mental abilities to solve the task at hand. In Polarium you always use the Dual Screen's touch screen and stylus to control the game. . The puzzles are all grids of black or white blocks that vary in size as you progress into the game. The object is to create a line starting from one point and ending at another to make the puzzle of blocks a solid color on each horizontal line. When you make a line you won't have to hold the stylus down but you will have to keep your line going until you finish otherwise you'll flip your tiles prematurely and lose.

What is the catch to this simple game? In Polarium you can only go over a block once so while you can undo mistakes you simply can't keep crossing over the same squares repeatedly, just once and that square is considered done. While that sounds easy you'll soon realize that a strategy is needed to actually start to defeat the game's 100 puzzles as lines like this will start to appear

Black, White, Black, White, Black

And just like that the simple formula really takes on new life, as every move you make is critical. There is one more element of the game but thankfully this is in your favor. Outside the puzzle grids are grey blocks that can't be flipped and their only purpose is to let you take your tile flipping line you make outside the box so to speak. This really opens up the various strategies for puzzles and you'll really notice how the in-game designed way to finish a puzzle may not be the best way for you. Then again if you are a perfectionist simply wait 5 minutes for the game to light up the starting and ending points the designers used when creating the puzzles.

There is one more game mode in Polarium and honestly it isn't as fun as puzzle mode. Challenge mode takes the puzzle mode object of making solid color lines and then adds in the feverish fast play of a level 10+ Tetris game. This mode requires a good sense of awareness, quick reflexes, and no screwups, as you won't have time to fix mistakes in this fast paced mode.

Audio isn't exactly Polarium's strong point at all. There is very little music to remember besides the peaceful overture during puzzle mode. Challenge mode features a well fitting “rush rush rush” esque track. That really sums up the Audio of Polarium, as there is very little to speak of.

As with Audio, Graphics aren't very noteworthy either. Being a puzzle game with black and white squares, its really hard to call these impressive. Then again who plays a puzzle game for graphics?

Finally, I come to Replay Value and aside from Challenge mode you won't find much unless you enjoy creating and solving your own custom Polarium puzzles. Being an early NDS title there is no online play, but there is download play if your friends like solving puzzles or failing to and feeling really dumb.

Polarium is a great game but it still has the budget title feel since it lacks in every department besides its featured Puzzle mode. Is it worth $10? Yeah it really is but not worth much more than that because without the Puzzle mode you might as well channel Tetris for the old gameboy.

Gameplay:8.0
Replay Value:1.0
Overall:8.0

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/14/06