"Gentleman, man your battlestations!"

After six months of waiting, yearning, and playing way too much Super Mario 64 DS, Meteos finally arrives on the Nintendo DS! This has got to be one of the best DS games to date. Whether you like puzzlers or not, this game is a keeper for sure. The object is simple: As blocks fall from the sky to form piles on the lower screen you must move one block at a time vertically to form horizontal or vertical blocks of three that are the same color. You will then trigger a rocket to shoot straight up into the air and off the screen and into your foes screen. Easy to learn, hard to master. Once you get the basics though, you can rack up a lot of points and prove how good you are to your friends. Now lets break it down a bit to see the general aspects of the game:

Graphics: Even for a puzzle game, Meteos has pretty powerful graphics. The backgrounds of your screen consist mostly of your home planet's scenery. The blocks that fall (which are sometimes other kinds of shapes) aren't all that detailed, but they don't really have to be as they are always falling or shooting of the screen at a rapid pace. Some have little designs on them, but you will be more concentrated on color than designs. With the exception of the opening movie, there is little 3D graphics, but everything else is smooth as silk. (9/10)

Control: There are two ways to play this game. One way is using the stylus to move the blocks up and down. You also tap on the surrounding icons to change the top screen's view, make the blocks fall faster, and switch to which target you want to attack. Like most DS games, you have to option of choosing your hand preference which will help you out quite a bit if you are a lefty. The second is using the D-pad to move a two block sized column left and right to arrange blocks just as you would with the stylus. To speed up blocks you press L or R and to change targets press the X and Y buttons. I found it much more comfortable and funner using the stylus to play. Using the D-pad and buttons felt a little awkward. Whichever feels the most comfortable to you, go for it. (9.5/10)

Sound and Music: The music is this game is fantastic! Every planet has it's own theme song and as more blocks pile on or you are closer to destruction, the music will change. The sounds are great too. Whenever you line up blocks of the same color to transform them into rockets, instead of hearing a bleep or a bloop like you would hear in a Tetris game, you hear a cord of music from a certain instrument. The more time you fire rockets that were on the same block mass, the music will last longer and be louder. If you can get five or six chains going on a single rocket, you could hear an orchestra symphony on you DS! When you fuse certain elements together (more on that in a minute) you can unlock sounds and tunes from the game to listen to in the music room. The music and sounds of Meteos work well with the DS's stereo speakers. This is perhaps the best I've heard on the little handheld to date! (10/10)

Replay and Multiplayer Value: This is possibly one of the largest DS games to date! There is tons of things to unlock and the multiplayer is perhaps the best available at this time! The fusion room (located on the menu) gets you most of your unlockables, such as planets, music, and items. Every meteos has a type like fire, soil, iron, etc. When you launch it off the screen you get one point from whichever category that meteos was in. When you enter the fusion room, your listed meteos points are shown on the top screen. Say you want to unlock the planet Freaze. It takes 200 H20 meteos and 200 frost meteos. You have enough so all you need to do is click on it and there you go! As I said before there are TONS of things to unlock so you'll be busy for a while. Meteos features multiplayer with both multi- and single-pack battles. (Although your experience wont nearly be as much fun with single pack than with multi-pack.) You can choose from a number of setting like stock, time, even team battles! Items play a special role in the game and make the battles even crazier! All in all, you won't find a funner puzzle/action experience on the DS than Meteos. (10/10)

So should you rent the game, or buy it? Well I can answer that in six short words: YES, GO BUY THIS GAME NOW!!! In fact go click the X at the top of the screen and got to you local video game retailer this instant! Don't have a DS? Now is the time to buy one! You will not be disappointed with this fabulous purchase, on this I assure you! Thank you for taking the time to read my review. I hope I have given you a general idea of what this game is about, and good luck out there fellow gamers!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/05