Puzzle Bobble VS – NG – Review

A mobile game console
isn’t a mobile game console without a puzzler.  Tetris is what originally led
the Game Boy to success – not Mario.  The console didn’t launch with a new Mario
title and did not have one for quite some time.  Although Mario was a powerful
force for home consoles, Tetris was the king of the mobile scene.  To this day
it is one of the few titles that women go crazy for.

As the puzzle genre
continued to evolve several new kinds of games appeared.  While not hugely
successful, all who played I.Q. for the PSone will never forget it (myself
included).  Columns and Dr. Mario took the block-dropping style of Tetris in a
whole other direction, and Tetris Attack took the genre to a whole new level.

Among those successful
puzzlers was a game called Puzzle Bobble.  Like Tetris, Puzzle Bobble has seen
many variations over the years (In North America it is most commonly seen in the
form of Bust-A-Move).

Puzzle Bobble could be
loosely described as an upside down version of Tetris but it’s much more than
that.  The gameplay exists within a rectangle that takes up about 45% of the
screen.  A bigger sized rectangle isn’t necessary since all of the action can be
created without a large space.  This also made it easy for developers to add the
must-have feature of split-screen multiplayer.  Puzzle games are fun to beat,
but it’s the multiplayer competition that really heats things up and is the only
way to determine whether or not you truly are the best player.

Within the rectangle is a
cluster of colored balls (blue, green, yellow, etc.).  Balls are Puzzle Bobble’s
answer to blocks; they are the life-force that keeps you alive.  If you don’t
have them, there’s no game!  You’ve completed the level and move onto the next.
If you have too many of them, the screen fills up quickly and the game ends.
The cluster formation varies from level to level, making it difficult to just
waltz in there and shoot your way to victory.  That’s how you eliminate the
balls – by shooting.  A small arrow-shaped ball projector is located at the
bottom of the rectangle and can be moved from left to right to line up the best
shot possible. 

Early on (when you’re
performing badly and the computer knows it), the game will aid you in your quest
for bobble dominance by adding a visual aid to the ball projector.  Tiny dots go
from the tip of the projector to wherever the projected ball will land.  This
clears up any confusion that may have been had in trying to fire those tricky
ricochet shots.  With the visual aid it’s easy to see which part of the wall
should be shot to make the ball bounce and land on the appropriate part of the
cluster.

There is something bad
that I have to tell you though, and although no pun is intended, I am still
puzzled by it.  This game, despite playing almost exactly like Bust-A-Move
(which I love) is one of the worst games you could buy for N-Gage.  All of those
wonderful things I just said are a description of what both Puzzle Bobble and
Bust-A-Move have to offer.

What I had not yet
mentioned was the fact that this game moves like molasses.  It’s slower than
slow.  You’ll be bored after the first five minutes of play.  For the sake of
argument (and to prove myself wrong), I got out my wonderful copy of Super
Bust-A-Move for Game Boy Advance.  The difference was immediately noticeable.
Super Bust-A-Move – which runs on inferior hardware – moved super-fast.  Then I
went back to Puzzle Bobble VS and nearly fell asleep.  I kept asking myself, "Is
it really this slow or am I just imagining it?"  I wasn’t imagining a thing.  I
have never played a puzzle game that moved this slow before.  There’s a lot of
enjoyment to be had with the N-Gage, but if this were the first N-Gage title you
played, you may never want to touch the system again.  That’s something that no
game should have the power to do.

Reviewer’s Scoring Details

Gameplay: 3
Super Bust-A-Move
without the fun.  The gameplay moves slower than a car with no tires.  It’ll put
you to sleep, and if it doesn’t do that, it’ll ensue enough frustration to lead
to defenestration.  You didn’t pay $300 to play [enter a not-so-nice word here]
like this.  No one did.

Graphics: 3
Blander than
bland.  These graphics slightly attempt to utilize the N-Gage’s power by having
polygonal characters in the background.  If they were going to make the game
look this bad they shouldn’t have bothered adding polygons at all.

Sound: 4
The cutesy,
happy-go-lucky music is less painful to hear than the graphics are to look at.
Shocking, isn’t it?

Difficulty: Easy
It’s too slow to
be challenging.

Concept: 3
Pop Quiz: If you
port an old game to the N-Gage and make it worse than it was before, what do you
get?

A)
A
disappointment.

B)
A
sleep-inducer.

C)
A good way to
kill time before dropping a bowling ball on your toe.

D)
All of the
above.

Multiplayer: 3

Overall: 3
Gamers can argue
about the titles that critics and their friends say they should buy, but is
there ever an argument when it comes to the titles that you should stay away
from?  Advice like this is given for a reason, and it’s something I have not had
to say about any other N-Gage title.  Puzzle Bobble VS is not super-fun, it’s
super-boring.  Soporific, if you will.  It’s not even a little fun in the
beginning.  And if you stick it out, guess what?  It doesn’t get any better.