Puyo Pop Fever

"Ready Go Go! Get Really Real!"

It's impossible to give a Puyo game a bad score. Ever since the first Puyo Puyo game, this series has done nothing but give tons of fun puzzle action to all.

The premise of the Puyo series is nothing more than matching up colors of dropping blocks. When four of the same color puyos (blobs, your puzzle pieces) have connected each other, they "pop" and disappear from your play field. While it sounds simple, the game can get much more complex. If more colors connect when they fall from the previous "pop," then they'll pop, too, resulting in chains. Also, the game is played against opponents, so the better your pops, the more garbage (nuisance puyos) fall on the opponent. They aren't helpless, though, and can counter your nuisance puyo drops with their own chains and puyo popping. The game can get incredibly competitive and is fun on any skill level.

Puyo Pop is also accompanied by cute characters who say funny jokes as you progress through the computer-controlled opponents. With human players, you'll have a ton of fun listening to your character shout funny things as you rack up more points and pop more puyos.

But why such a high score? This game is too fun for anyone to pass up. Even as basic as the game sounds, you will never stop having fun with the game. With handicaps and things, players on different levels can play together, and everyone has fun. It's difficult for me to stress just how fun this game really is, so you'll have to buy it for yourself to understand.

It might be easier if I divide everything into categories...

Gameplay

Puyo Pop has wonderful gameplay. All the controls work smoothly, and there are no annoying DS touch-screen strange things (you can use the touch screen to control if you want, but I've never actually known someone to do that. You'll be playing with the buttons the whole time). The DS features are only used in ways that enhance gameplay or just to do cute things. You can blow on the mic to make your character shout something during a match, or you can touch the menu selections instead of pressing A on them. Also, blowing on the mic during menus or the opening screen will do cute things (during the opening screen, you can actually make puyos fall down so you can juggle them with your stylus!)

Each Puyo game has a special feature that makes it different from all the other games. Puyo Pop Fever's special feature is not only now the ability for two to four puyos to drop at once, but the Fever Mode!

Whenever you offset your opponent's nuisance puyo, you will add to your Fever Gauge. When this fills up, you enter Fever Mode. The game will set up combos for you to try to get a lot of nuisance puyos to your opponent quickly, but they of course can counter them to fill up their fever gauge (if they're fast enough!) The Fever Mode adds a whole new level of strategy that can make for some action-packed matches against friends and computers.

Another great feature -- exclusive to the DS version of this game -- is the eight-player multiplayer. Eight players with a DS can get together and play with each other in a giant puyo popping free-for-all! This is really exciting and fun, even if the scoring and nuisance puyo tallying makes it a little difficult to win based on skill over luck.

Graphics & Sound

The graphics in Puyo Pop Fever disappointed a lot of Puyo fans -- they turned the nicely-drawn fantasy world into a cartoony candy land. Not everyone hates it, though, and if these graphics don't bother you, you will love it (especially if you never really played Puyo games before so you're not attached to the old version). I'll have to admit I was saddened when I saw the weird new characters and graphics, but I've since gotten used to it. Besides, most of the time you're looking at the battle field and the puyos (which are a little brighter, but it's all the same game).

The sound is cute, and the voices are really funny. Again, not as great as the old games, but the new Fever game has a charm of its own. Everything is very cute, and some of the characters' voices are very funny.

There's nothing to be disappointed about in the graphics and sound department. Everything looks and sounds fine.

Replay

This game will never get old as long as you live. I've never stopped playing this game, and I've never had a bad time with it. You can always play against friends or just pop in for a game against the computer. If you feel like playing for a while, you can challenge yourself to a solo mode and see what kind of high scores you can get.

Overall

This is one of the best games on the DS right now. While it doesn't really take advantage of the DS's features (except for using the two screens to enable eight player multiplayer), it doesn't need to; after all, it is a puyo game, and we wouldn't want it any differently. The game is highly addictive, fun, strategic, and competitive, and all players of all ages and skill levels can have unlimited amounts of fun with this game. If you own a DS, I'd try to track this game down (since Atlus released it, it'll be hard to find now, but you can probably easily find it on the internet) because it is a must-have game for any DS game collection.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/06