Puzzler games, especially those on handhelds, tend to be both the most commonly played and most liked among gamers of all creeds and consoles. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not only never played Tetris but also didn't enjoy it so much to have at least one anecdote about sleeping through some important event from overplaying it the previous night.So far the greatest DS puzzler I've discovered is Meteos, shortly pipping Zoo Keeper and Polarium to that title, as well as the new Tetris DS itself. Now, Meteos is fairly well known and has been out for a while at the time of this blog entry, but since it has engrossed me utterly for the past few weeks I figured it was worth closer scrutiny.
Like a great many puzzle games, the basic gameplay depends on the player lining up several identically-colored pieces (called Meteos, as they tend to plummet out of the sky in much the same manner as their namesake) and using them to launch blocks out of the immediate game area to avoid a dangerous and potentially-fatal surplus. However, in several cases, one simple line of three will not have the sufficient driving power to elevate the Meteos off and out of the game area, and so various tactics must be employed to boost the driving power of the Meteos so they can escape the planet's gravity. It is at this point where the old adage "easy to learn, difficult to master" comes to effect.
Since I've described the general basics of gameplay, I'll move onto the whole Meteos style. While I don't put a whole lot of stock into the art and music of a game (compared to the gameplay, which I've always considered more important), the Meteos universe entranced me. Each planet has their own distinctive look and style, and moreso they have very different playing methods. For instance, several planets will greatly boost the power of a vertical line (which are far easier to set up than horizontal lines though don't have the same clearing effect) while several planets flat out ignore them, giving them no boosting power whatsoever and effectively burning out those Meteos for several seconds. Take in account the planets' different gravities and their varying overall size and each planet is a new experience in and of itself for the player to learn all about.
The best thing about Meteos, or any puzzle game for that matter, is the learning curve. Presuming you haven't read the instructions or played the tutorial (I rarely do, since I like to jump straight in and feel my way around), the first time you play will be a confusing mishmash of various Meteos blasting off after landing in fortuitous positions, at which point you slowly learn how to blast the Meteos yourself, picking up how to make chains and sweep up extra vertical lines into your mobile Meteos stacks. After learning how to play the game, you can eventually learn various tricks to increase the amount of Meteos you can blast off at once for your opponent to deal with; as once they leave the atmosphere, the Meteos find the computer opponent players and drop them on their playing field instead. I am now far better than I previously was thanks to practice and learning these tricks, but am still nowhere near skilled enough to take on the harder challenges on offer.
Final note, the other thing I love about this game - and a feature I keep coming back to with these entries - is the collection subquest. All the Meteos you manage to blast off your screen collect on the main page for you to fuse together to create various things to assist with the main game. Some of these are items, which can be selected on or off on the Options page (so if there's a particular item you strongly like or dislike, you can increase/remove it once you've "fused" that item), these items of course being another thing for the player to learn about as they play. There are also sound sets (just for listening to basically), Rare Meteos (which are as the name states, rare Meteos that come up once in a blue moon, but can be made at great cost with regular Meteos) and Planets, which allows you to select your home planet from a greater range of planets available to play against in the main game. Having all these features to unlock would be reason enough to keep playing if the game wasn't so addictive all ready.
I think I've gushed enough about this game, so let me just finish with the look: While each level has its own unique background and little alien sprite (which dance as you're playing), they also shape their Meteo pieces differently. Luna=Luna uses colored warning signs, while Gigagush has little Space Invader guys of various colors. The coloring, of course, reflects what "type" of Meteo piece it is, and each planet once again has their own unique set of what colors to expect and in what quantity (a lush marsh world like Boggob has plenty of "Zoo" Meteos for instance, while a robot world would have plenty of "Iron" and "Zap" Meteos). For such a small game the attention to detail is amazing.
As I recall Meteos has a sister game named Lumines. I really must try that out at some point.
