Puyo Pop Fever Review

 

Publish by: Atlus/Sega

Developed by: Sega

Genre: Puzzle

Rated: E Mild Violence

While the DS still doesn’t have many hits of really good titles, is still getting a lot of interesting puzzles titles to keep the handheld solid enough. Mr. Driller was actually one of the 1st puzzle titles on the DS. It was a unique step for the franchise with the dual screen functionality that let you see on the top screen the blocks that were falling down, it really helps you not getting squish by the blocks. Sadly the gameplay itself was too repetitive and not addictive as other puzzle titles out there. Then there was Polarium that had some interesting ideas too, but the game felt too bland with his plain graphics. Meteos then changes all of this by giving a unique addictive gameplay for puzzle fans. It was pretty simple but really entertaining in both eye candy and gameplay. But that did not stop Sega to bring the Puyo Pop franchise onto the DS with Puyo Pop Fever.

Puyo Pop Fever is pretty much Tetris with a few twists here and there. In Puyo Pop Fever you must do a chain of 4 puyos that have the same color to disappear them. The interesting thing is to make combos, which can be done by doing more than just 1 chain at the same time. That’s where you have to create your own strategies in making those combos. Each time you create chains the opponents will receive white puyos that can’t be chained, but your opponent can also do combos to send you white annoying puyos. By making big combos you will make the opponent receive a lot of those white puyos. With the chains you create you can eliminate the white puyos that are close to that chain of normal puyos. The goal of the game is to make your opponent get his screen up to the top full of puyos and win the game. You have to be very careful when puyos are reaching the top because your opponent at any time can perform a big combo and win you easily because your puyos reached the top. But if you make a lot of combos you can destroy some white puyos before they fall in your screen.

The new addition to the Puyo Pop franchise is the Fever mode. To enter this mode you will need to fill the fever bar on the right of the screen by making a lot of chains and combos. In fever mode they gave you new puyos in which most of the time 3 puyos will be chained, you will have to find a way to make a lot of combos with those prepared chains. You will receive new different Puyo chains after finishing the previous group of chains. This is really sweet and actually helps you to easily fill up your opponent’s screen with white puyos or save yourself from white puyos that will soon fall to your screen, because you can make many combos with fever mode.

Puyo Pop Fever is more of a port from the console version, mainly because the game does not use the DS unique capabilities into the action. The top screen shows the action were you are joining the puyos while on the touch screen you see the characters that are battling each other. Each time you make a combo your character will hit the opponent. Is a pretty lame use of the touch screen, although you can control the falling puyos with the touch screen, the d-pad is actually more responsive then the touch screen. There is practically in other words nothing new or innovative in Puyo Pop Fever with the DS capabilities, but still it doesn’t low the fun gameplay experience that you are getting.

The game does offer other modes to play in: an infinite game of puyos, the fever mode only to practice your combos, and other simple modes. While none of these modes are quite entertaining has the main one is still offers something for everyone. The multiplayer is pretty nice since you can battle with up to 8 people at the same time, which is madness of fun. The also really good thing is that you can play it with only one single cartridge needed.

The graphics on this game are not much to talk about since they are quite repetitive. There is nothing fancy here to see only puyos appearing and disappearing. Characters look like anime ones, in other words pretty weird. The backgrounds are very simplistic, but then again it gets all covered up by puyos so you might not even know what the background is is all about. The background for fever mode might look to plain but fits nicely when fever mode starts. The game itself might look like a simplistic package in graphics, but is colorful and very active unlike Polarium that had too many bland white and black blocks.

The audio here is also nothing really big to expect. The music fits in nicely with the puzzle action, although sometimes some songs sound similar to others which make things feel not so varied. The sound effects are nothing to really hear, the only effects that you will hear frequent is when you do a combo and disappear those puyos. There are some voiceovers on the characters saying they are winning or screaming of happiness when they do a combo. Now there is one big problem I found when using the headphones and it was that your character constantly started saying a line that sounded like “yeah” so many times while playing. The thing is that this doesn’t happen when you don’t use the headphones, must have been a glitch.

Puyo Pop Fever does not deliver anything astonishing in the graphics or the sound department but the addictive gameplay is what Puyo Pop Fever is all about. Multiplayer is certainly fun to play with your friends too. Puyo Pop Fever may not be different has the consoles version but the game itself feels more interesting to play it anywhere in a portable. Puyo Pop Fever is another puzzle hit for fans of the genre that own a DS.

Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 8/10
Replay: 8/10
Tilt: 8/10

Overall: 8 out of 10