Match three or four puzzles can be found everywhere. Competitive, head to head puzzles less so, but there are flavours of those too, of which we've been pointed towards Puyo Pop Fever.
It's certainly got a bright and bubbly look to go along with its blobby coloured characters - if you can call your pieces 'characters'. Let's see what it's all about.
Frustrations
Gameplay generally trumps graphics, right? A solid game mechanic should be stronger than the skin it wears. Puyo Pop Fever's gameplay should not be judged on its cartoony cast, because I hate them already. The whiny voices, the ridiculous clothing, the fact that we start in a damn magic school...
This is a bubble popping puzzle battler. What is this nonsense plot getting in the way?
Well, it's a thinly veiled tutorial, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to new players like me. What does make sense is getting hands-on with the gameplay.
Pairs of bubbles fall from the top of the screen, which you can rotate around until you settle on a place to put them. Like colours will merge together into a big bubbly group, and if four little bubbles are grouped together, they'll pop, and send some useless colourless bubbles into your competitors' window.
Colourless bubbles can't be popped until something is popped next to them, so the dead space will add to the pressure of grouping the bubbles together to get rid of them, and compound the problems your foe faces. Before long, you'll have an empty window and they most certainly won't.
If a group of bubbles pops and results in two smaller groups of colours coming into contact with each enough, forming another group to pop, you've just set off a chain. The more chains you can manage to pull off, the more of a problem your opponent will face, as more barriers to progress is dumped onto their screen.
But it won't all be plain sailing, as what you do to others can just as easily be done to you. First, you suffer a setback, then you struggle for space, then panicked inputs result in further problems, and then you really are stuffed. The game can swing to and fro, but you need to be quick about it. You need to be prepared for problems and deal with them before they escalate.
I couldn't, in this instance, but that'll come with practice - if I feel the need to play Puyo Pop Fever for any length of time.
Final Word
And that's the problem. The gameplay isn't bad. I'm not amazed by it, I'm not disgusted by it, it's a solid game. But the skin it wears is too much. I can't get past it. I can't ignore it. It doesn't go away.
Strip that all away and I'd recommend Puyo Pop Fever for a quick burst of gaming, especially against another human. If you don't have an opponent, though, you'd have to be rather interested in it to want to play it. At the minute, that's not me.
With multiple ports and releases, though, you might find the exact one you need for some multiplayer mayhem. There are better multiplayer games out there, but for straight-up puzzle battles, well, Puyo Pop Fever probably stands out. It's worth a look, for sure.
Fun Facts
If you think all Puyo Pop Fever needs to be the game of your dreams is the inclusion of tennis, then you should look into Sega Superstars Tennis, where it makes a mini-game appearance. Also, you have weird dreams.
Puyo Pop Fever, developed by Sonic Team, first released in 2003.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2004, via emulation.