The Sky Is Falling!

[Stratadrake]

My last thread discussed puzzle-genre games in general.

This one, I'm going into specifics about one game in specific.

[b]Meteos[/b], for the Nintendo DS.

You pick up this thing and read what it says on the back, the "most frantic puzzle game in the galaxy". And you might think, nice advertising, the game probably blows, right?

But if you got a DS, try it anyways. You won't be disappointed.

We all know the drill about tile/block puzzle games. Meteos is a post-sort variety where the blocks fall onto your board steadily and automatically, and it's your job to sort and swap the blocks already on the board to form a horizontal or vertical row of 3 or more similar blocks.

When you do that, like all puzzle games, they go *Poof* and disappear from the board. Right?

Not anymore. This is where Meteos differentiates itself from the standard puzzle formula. Rather than disappearing from the board instantly, once you've lined up a row, they ignite into rockets and launch upwards, taking all the pieces on top of them with it.

The only problem? Here's what makes Meteos so frantic -- even as the pieces are lifting off from the board, more pieces are still falling onto the board and, yes, onto the very stack that's lifting. It's no surprise what happens next: As the rising stack gets heavier underneath the weight of more falling blocks, it ascends slower, and eventually comes right back down and lands where it started. So much work to line up 3 in a row, and that didn't even get it off the board?

Fortunately, it's no work at all, because you play with the touch screen, and you can simply touch and slide the blocks around their stacks at will No more having to carefully position or rotate pieces here, no having to move a cursor around a board and hit buttons, you just tap and slide. In moments, while the one stack has just landed, you've just lined up another 3, sending that stack higher again, and earning a point multiplier in the process. Before long (especially in the weirder levels), you'll be lining up 3 or 4 rows on the same stack before it has enough thrust to overcome the incoming rain of blocks and finally lift off.

And then what happens next?

Enter the Story Mode. Because puzzle games need story modes like... well, let's be honest here, it's a puzzle game! It doesn't NEED a story!

But Meteos has one anyway. An evil planet called "Meteo" (hence the name) terrorized the other planets by launching never-ending streams of matter at them, covering and drowning the planets until life on them dies and the planet itself explodes. But one planet realizes that, by lining up the incoming 'meteo' blocks by color, the blocks ignite, lifting off and shoving other Meteos into space. And so they form a defense strategy, discovering new ways to organize and line up the falling meteos to protect their planet, and in so doing assembling a ship from Meteo ore, a ship with a singular mission to track down and ultimately eliminate the planet Meteo itself.

Yes, that's the story. It's a wild little universe we have here.

Of course, you can play single games like a timed trial or simple endurance/survival mode, but the competitive play (whether in Story mode, multiplayer versus, or single free-for-alls) is where this game really shines. Guess what happens when a stack of meteos finally launches off of your board into space?

That's right, it rains down on everyone else you're playing against. The blocks rain down upon them in lifeless gray, cluttering and filling up their board according to just how large a stack you were able to launch. Game Over? Not just yet, because the "garbage" blocks don't count towards their field's limit, and even if it weighs down all their stacks, leaving them with a singular mass of garbage blocks completely filling the field, the garbage quickly reverts back to normal colored blocks, and they're given a few precious seconds to form matches of their own and clear space, before getting a game over with their playfield (their planet) "going nova".

Even when the tables are turned and you find your own playfield buried underneath a whole field of garbage blocks, you don't give up, you can still sort through them and line up a row to launch, preferably two. The next thing they know, you're lifting off an entire mountain of stacks yourself and burying their board right with it.

Because, in a puzzle game, revenge is best served quickly. And Meteos succeeds at this.

Then there's the music. Rather than a fixed BGM for each level you play on, Meteos features a dynamic hybrid of music and sound effects which integrates directly to how you play, how high your field is, whether you line up horizontal or vertical stacks, when you form combos, and so on. So, while sorting out the blocks on your field, you're also mixing your own tunes as you go along. Not that this is the point of the game -- but it doesn't hurt, no?

And then there's the levels. Unlike in other puzzle games where a level may only differ cosmetically, Meteos offers many different planets to play on (you start with four, but you can unlock more as you progress, up to a whopping total of 32!), each with different rules for gravity, for example:

- Forte: Large stacks quickly become difficult to keep aloft with horizontal matches, where a single vertical match can blast the whole pile straight into space.
- Gigagush: The whole field looks and sounds like something from the Atari era, and each match results in a decent launch, but they always seem to come crashing back down to ground the moment a falling block lands on them.
- Vubble: Horizontal matches are very powerful, but vertical matches have literally no power at all.
- Gravitas: Simple matches just do nothing, you have to combine them with a second match to launch them. And when they launch, they blast straight off the board.
- Twin Moons: Very low gravity here means that your launches rise slowly. Not only that, but the meteos fall in much denser clusters here. Good luck lasting more than 2-3 minutes in "Deluge" (endurance) mode here.
- Hevendor: This planet has no atmosphere. Literally. Line up a stack and... BLAM! It launches straight into space, instantly, without regard for weight or incoming blocks. This is as close to a traditional puzzle game as Meteos gets. And again, good luck trying to last more than 2-3 minutes in "Deluge" mode here.



And that's about it: a killer app of a puzzle game, very easy to pick up and play, great variety between levels, with awesome music and hard to find flaws in.

Your thoughts?
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