"Sci-Fi Adrenaline Pumping Action!"

Meteos

Introduction

If you have spent any time in the DS world lately, chances are you have heard about Meteos. It has been widely accepted by all types of gamers, and the general consensus is that it is a good game. Does Meteos live up to its reputation? If it does, is it really worth going out and buying? And what are Meteos, anyway? These questions may have crossed your mind, and whether you are looking for answers or are just curious about the game, this is the right place to be.

Storyline: 9.0

Meteos has an awesome storyline. What's even better is it's for a puzzle game! Normally, puzzle games don't have storylines, and if they do, they are plain stupid. Meteos is different. It's storyline is actually very relevant to the game play, not to mention interesting. Because it is so well made, I decided that it would not be right for me to summarize it. So here it is in its full form.

“It was a dark time... The existence of all planets was threatened by one: the evil planet Meteo. A stream of phantasmagoric (constantly changing) matter flowed endlessly from the planet. This matter -- called Meteos -- crushed life and stole the sparkle of the universe. World after world fell... But then, by chance, three Meteos of the same type aligned. Fusing together, they ignited, firing the other Meteos into space!

“A defense strategy was formed: the civilizations of each planet launched counterattacks by fusing Meteos in different ways Thus the last desperate stand versus Meteo began. The Metamo Ark – a warship made of Meteos ore—set off as a bastion of hope, with the fate of the entire universe resting on a lone civilization's valor.”

Picture that with 3-D graphics of matter colliding into planets, planets exploding, and Meteos rocks fusing together and blasting other Meteos into space. It's really something to see. Not only does it have a great sci-fi story, it also has great graphics to accompany it.

How does the story end? That's the beauty of Meteos! Depending on what path you take to get to Meteos and how well you do, you will see one of twelve different endings. Some of the endings are satisfyingly good, while others are hauntingly evil. Chances are you will enjoy at least one of them.

Controls: 7.0

Controls are not something to worry about in Meteos. As long as your touch screen works, the controls in Meteos will be precise, allowing you to quickly arrange the Meteos exactly how you want them. Even in the special “mini-level” you can still move the hundreds of tiny Meteos perfectly.

You're probably asking why I didn't give the controls of Meteos a higher score because they are so good. First, I'll say that the score I gave them is a fairly high score; I tend to grade a little stricter than most people. Second, the reason I did not give the controls of Meteos a higher score is because there is not much to them. Everything in Meteos is controlled by the touch screen, though there is not much to control. Basically, the only ability you have is the ability to move Meteos up and down in their columns. Since that's about the extent of the controls, I didn't feel that I should give Meteos too high of a score.

Game Play: 8.2

Simple, yet excellent. That's only a fragment, but it alone describes the game play in Meteos. When you play, the planet you are on will begin with three lines of Meteos already on it. (Meteos are usually different colored blocks.) As time passes, more and more Meteos will fall from the sky. If the Meteos reach the top of the screen, they will overcome your planet and cause total annihilation.

To protect your world, you will need to send the Meteos back into space. Simply tap a Meteo and drag it up or down in a vertical line until it is exactly where you want it. Keep doing this with multiple Meteos until you line three of a kind in a row horizontally or vertically. The aligned Meteos will fuse together and shoot into the sky. That's the main part of the game play in Meteos.

However, it expands from there. Meteos may have a two minute learning curve, but that doesn't mean it's game play has nothing to it. Once the Meteos are in the air, they will not necessarily go into space. By aligning more Meteos together in the airborne stack, you can shoot it even higher until it is off the screen and out of you mind. By waiting for the stack to land and then fusing some of the Meteos in the stack with Meteos outside of the stack, you can create an even bigger stack. All of the Meteos above the newly fused Meteos, as well as the Meteos that were already combined, will shoot off together.

The more columns you align, the bigger your stack will be. It is possible to make it take up the entire screen, so no new Meteos can fall to the planet. From there you can line three Meteos of the same type and blast the entire stack until it disappears forever.

Then there are the items. Whenever you play Meteos, the Meteos that you clear from your planet are added to your total. Using the Meteos that you launched into space, you can fuse together new items for your use. These items include a super rocket that can launch all of the Meteos into the air at once, a hammer that destroys a lot of the Meteos onscreen, and a smoke emitter that you can send to your opponent to disrupt his view.

Did I forget to mention something earlier? You have opponents in this game! It's not like Tetris where you just try to survive as random four block shapes fall from the sky; you have to fight and defeat opponents that get in your way. Along with the regular Meteos the fall from the sky, you and your opponent will be able to send each other incinerated Meteos and send regular Meteos at an increased speed. The last one to be annihilated wins. So simple, isn't it?

It would be really boring if everyone fought on the same planet all the time. For that reason, Bandai and Q Entertainment put in 32 different planets to play on! Each planet has its own unique characteristics: its look, its Meteos, its gravity, its size, even its music! The different types of Meteos may confuse people at first, but they only need to match up the colors and they are good to go. Besides the Meteos, people will also have to get used to the different physics of each planet. For example, in Hevendor Meteos stacks instantly disappear into the sky once they are fused, while in Gravitrar you must have burnt Meteos on the ground before anything will go into the sky. It all depends on the planet, and with 32 of them you will definitely have plenty of variety.

There would be little point to the game if you received all of the planets at once. To earn the planets, you have to fuse them together. At the beginning of the game you start with four planets: Geolyte, Oleana, Firin, and Anasaze. By playing the game and launching more Meteos, you can earn enough of the different colors of Meteos to fuse together new planets to use.

Now, all of these aspects would be no good if there was no game modes to accompany them. Fortunately, Meteos has four. First is Simple mode, where you compete as any planet at any difficulty setting against up to three computer opponents of the team and skill level that you choose. It's a great way to just kick back and enjoy the game while earning additional Meteos that you can use to fuse planets together.

Depending on how tough your challenger is, you may have one intense battle ahead of you. Some people classify Meteos as a puzzle game, but I have no idea where that got that from. Sure, you have to line up three Meteos of the same color, but that's about as puzzling as the game gets. It's more of an action game, as you have to have speedy stylus skills during very intense battles. I guess locating Meteos of the same color and figuring out the best combination for the many different Meteos are important. However, when your adrenaline is pumping because your opponent just sent you a huge stack of burnt Meteos it is impossible to place this game (even in Simple) in anything but the action genre.

Next is Deluge. Deluge (heavy downpour) is a mode where you try to survive as long as you can while earning high scores. To play Deluge, you only need to choose one of the planets that you have fused. From there, you must play until you die. The longer you last, the quicker the Meteos pour down upon you. If you make it past the three minute mark in Deluge, you are doing excellent. By that time Meteos are falling to the planet at a blinding speed.

Time War accompanies Deluge. It has various challenges that have to do with time. In the first two challenges, you have two or five minutes to score as many points as possible. The planets are pre-chosen, so you can't take advantage of high point planets in this mode. The next two modes are 100 Meteos and 1,000 Meteos, in which you must clear out that many Meteos in as short a time as possible. The planets for the last two modes are also pre-chosen, but they are ones that allow you to eliminate Meteos quickly. It's not a lot, but Time War does offer additional fun and replay value.

The last game mode is Star Trip. It's the mode that's based off the storyline, and by far the most exhilarating. In Star Trip are three types of trips that you can take: Straight, Branch, and Multi. Each trip has five levels of difficulty for you to choose from. The last difficulty is really hard, so this game will always have additional challenge for you if you find the other modes to easy for you.

Straight is the first game mode, and in it you fight seven randomly chosen planets with the last one being Meteos. As the Metamo Ark, you take the form of whatever planet you fight against. If you're up against Starii, you'll fight as Starii. It's just like a regular game where you clear Meteos and annihilate your opponent to win, only you get to move onto the next planet when you do so. When you face and defeat Meteos, you will see one of two endings depending on how well you performed.

The next mode, Branch, contains every single planet in the game. You start out on Geolyte, fighting until you defeat the planet. From there you can choose your route to Meteos. Since the planets keep branching out, you will constantly have to decide which planet you would rather fight. After defeating seven planets, you will have to face one of seven Meteos. The Meteos you fight is determined by the path the you took. Each Meteos planet leads to a different ending, so the game offers a great incentive to take every path possible.

Multi is the most intense of all the Star Trip paths. It has many planetary systems scattered about the solar system. As you go to the various systems, you will have different missions to accomplish, such as Clear 200 Meteos or Win Under 2:30. Not only will you have to attempt to complete the missions, you will also have to defeat up to three opponents.

If you complete a mission, you will get to choose your next destination. If you only win but do not finish the mission, you will have to take the lowest path. At the end are three Meteos, which you can get to by completing (or failing) the missions. Each Meteos has its own special ending.

Well, that's the game play in a nutshell. A nutshell?!? Yes, Meteos contains so much more than I just described, especially when you consider how unique each of the planets are. I could have gone into detail on all the amazing aspects of Meteos's game play, but I think the amount of text required for such a task would have intimidated even the most dedicated readers.

Graphics: 8.0

The first experience you will have with Meteos's graphics will probably be the introduction (if you are patient enough to wait for it). In the introduction are beautiful graphics that truly show the DS's potential. 3-D Meteos fly around space and smash into planets, causing the detailed planets to explode. The planet Meteos itself is also realistic, and one scene of the introduction even shows Meteos streams emerging out of well rendered lava. The Metamo Ark in the introduction is also an example of the DS's ability to use highly detailed computer generated graphics. They might not be next gen, but they sure do take your breath away.

While the introduction has awesome graphics, the rest of the game only has regular 2-D graphics. The Meteos are in 2-D (they look nice), the items are in 2-D, and even the Metamo Ark is 2-D in Star Trip. All of the objects in the game look nice, but you will quickly start wondering what happened to the awesome graphics of the introductory sequence. Well, the truth is Q Entertainment and Bandai did not make the starting sequence. They actually outsourced the job to another company, Digital Media Lab, who did a wonderful job on the introduction.

During game play, you will see the Meteos blocks ignite and fly off the screen. As you play, you will also notice the other planets that you are fighting against, which rest peacefully on the top screen. The planets are 2-D, but they look good enough so that someone who was not paying close attention could easily mistake them for 3-D models.

Whenever you clear Meteos off your screen, they will fly to another planet and you will see them collide. It is almost humorous -- Meteos smashing into another planet that keeps moving back as if it is trying to avoid the oncoming horde. The way they did the interaction with the planets and the Meteos is excellent (even though the true interaction comes when the Meteos enter the other planet's playing field). The planets even explode when you defeat them, which is cool despite the 2-Dness.

Since most of the game was not done by a professional graphics company, it mostly offers basic 2-D. Although they majority of the graphics do not have the illustrious reputation that 3-D graphics have, they are still well done. This is especially true when you consider that most puzzle/action games are lacking in graphics, so Meteos stands far above other in the crowd when it comes to graphics.

Sound: 8.7

Electroplankton meets Tetris for this sci-fi adventure! Yes, it is a puzzle (action) game, but it is also a musical journey. The game play is good, but the sound is even better. For starters, each of the 32 planets has its own music, and musical scores were also written for the menu screens. That's a lot of songs.

But it gets better. First, I'll comment on how cool the music sounds. With that out of the way, we move onto the sound effects. Whenever you move Meteos, you will be able to hear them moving up and down the stack. As soon as three are aligned, they will launch, and you will really hear the ignition of the Meteos as they shoot into the air.

Though the main music and the sounds effects are good, they are not what makes the sound in Meteos truly great. Besides the basic sound effects, other sounds occur when you do things to the Meteos. The music changes. Yes, it changes. I can't explain it very well with text, but I'll do my best.

Each level has a basic music background the plays throughout the entire game. As you launch Meteos, additional parts are added to the music. However, the added parts do not sound strange. They actually flow with the music, so it almost seems as if the music just happened to heighten at the moment the Meteos were launched.

Many different actions alter the music, such as the landing of Meteos stacks and the increasing of Meteos. To give you an example of how much the music can change, I will consult the sound test menu. Each planet has a number of different sound effects that go along with it, which you can access in the sound test. About the first thirty sound effects, however, are completely devoted to music. That's how much can be added to the basic music. It is definitely one of the best ideas in the game, and one that complements the game play.

Replay Value: 8.2

It's fun, but does it last? I'll answer that question with an emphatic yes! Each aspect of the game relies on high scores, and the process of launching Meteos does not get stale for many hours. After you have fused everything there is to fuse, you will still be able to go back and have fun in Star Trip, Simple, Deluge, and Time War, either playing around or going for high scores.

However, it's not like its easy to fuse everything. Fusing planets take Meteos, Meteos that you can only earn by playing the game. By the time your thoroughly finished with the Fusion Room, you should have around 25 hours of play time.

The fun does not end, as you can still play to get all 12 endings (if you haven't already done so). The game itself is also fun -- I enjoy it much more than Tetris -- and action games like this don't easily give up their entertainment value. Who knew lining up colors could be so challenging, so fun, and so rewarding?

Multiplayer: 8.5

At the time of its release, I could safely say that Meteos had a better multiplayer than all of its DS predecessors. It was, perhaps, the first DS game to truly show how good the DS's wireless multiplayer could be, and the first one to keep me from constantly wishing that the DS could play GBA games in multiplayer mode.

The multiplayer is basically the single player, just with your friends. In the single player, you play Meteos and launch the blocks at your computer opponents to destroy them. It's the same way in multiplayer. Since the single player was splendid, there was no need to make changes when going to multiplayer.

Meteos allows gamers to play multiplayer using single card or multi-card play. In single card play, up to four players can play on one of the first four planets. In multi-card play, up to four players can play on any planet they choose. After that it's just like single player, only more intense because you are against your friends.

Closing

Action, puzzles, music: what more could you want? To classify it as just a plain old puzzle game is really degrading to Meteos. It contains puzzle elements, but it is too fast-paced to be a regular puzzle game. With quickening music, planet threatening Meteos stacks, and mind boggling game play, the heart pounding action in Meteos is too much to avoid. And once you have it, it is hard to put down.

Overall Score: 8.3

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/17/05, Updated 10/04/05