Columns

"Hours and hours of fun..."

We all know about Tetris, and most of us know about Columns, Sega's attempt to mooch off Nintendo's success with the puzzle genre.

Columns is basically like Tetris, only there's color. You have to match colors now instead of building simple rows, which makes it just a bit more difficult.

Graphics - 9/10
The graphics are nice and smooth. The balls are shiny and the colors are very clear. The backgrounds on which you play are nicely done. A really great job with the graphics here.

Audio - 10/10
The sound is great. The regular songs are nice, but when you're up against the big boss...that's some nice music...the sound of the balls clinking together are nice too, it's so satisfying to hear the sound of falling bricks over at your opponent's side when you activate that level 5 power up...

Story - 3/10
You have to play columns against a big bad guy's minions. You have to win to win the right to face off against the big baddie himself. Yup, it's another one of those games, where you could easily be killed by a knife or some other pointy object, but they decide to play a game of some sort. Puzzle games never have that much of a story, but they don't really matter any way.

Gameplay - 10/10
Addictive. Almost as addictive as crack. I could play this for hours and hours, especially on a road trip. The only problem is that the battery life for the Game Gear is pretty short, and that's some serious injustice to Columns. It plays basically like any other 'stuff fall down from ceiling, match stuff to clear them' puzzle game. A nice little feature is the power ups. When you clear more and more balls, a little meter on the middle of the screen goes up, indicating the level of power up that you can use. It's always fun to drop a bunch of bricks on them when they're about to do a huge clear that would lead to a chain combo...

Replay Value - 10/10
This is one of those games that could last forever...or at least as long as the battery stays in good condition ^.^ I still play it on those long road trips, it sure beats the hell out of reading a book ^.^

Final Comments
If you have a Game Gear and spot this game somewhere, snatch it up before someone else does, seriously. This is a must have for all Game Gear owners.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/01, Updated 12/08/01