FUSION FRENZY
Russia and Japan’s finest puzzlers meet in the delightful Puyo Puyo Tetris.
On paper, this alliance of two evergreen puzzlers makes perfect sense. If both games are brilliant, then bringing them together would naturally seem to equal brilliant squared. Yet it’s also an idea fraught with risk: There’s always a chance such a hybrid might dilute their individual excellence. Happily, as you’ve no doubt already guessed from the score, that’s not the case here. This spirited revival manages to offer the best of both worlds.
Given that it’s harder to find an electronic device that doesn’t play a version of Tetris, this grandaddy of puzzlers warrants little introduction. It remains unassailably brilliant. But Puyo Puyo is no brash upstart, either. First released on the Famicom Disk System and MSX2 back in 1991, it’s a mere seven years younger than its Russian cousin. If it’s less well-known, that’s because this is the first time Puyo Puyo has kept its Japanese title for a western release.
For those not versed in Puyo Puyo, it’s an ostensibly simple match-four puzzler. Blobs fall from the top of the screen, and it’s your job to place them in groups of the same color. Only rank amateurs remove a paltry four blobs at once, though. The idea is to position them so that one match immediately becomes two and then three, with blobs falling neatly into the gaps left behind by the recently popped to create chain reactions.
It’s not quite as immediate as Tetris. It takes a little time to acclimatize, and to learn the patterns that set off those satisfying chains. But PPT’s surprisingly hefty Adventure mode compensates for the lackluster tutorials, giving you plenty of opportunities to learn on the job. The story’s saccharine presentation won’t be to all tastes, but it has a relentless, puppyish gusto that might just convince you to go with it. And if you do find it tiresome, you can skip the preamble get on with puzzling.
The broad range of challenges incorporate both games. On some stages, you’ll simply have to play Tetris against a Puyo AI opponent, or vice versa. For others, you’ll switch between modes. You might be battling against the clock one minute, and trying to hit a specific score target before your rival the next. After a gentle opening, the AI stops going easy on you, presenting a stiff challenge that seems to keep pace with your own progress.
You’ll need to use the hard drop (press up to make blocks crash down in an instant) and master Puyo’s stair patterns as opponents grow ever more ruthless. But there always seems to be a way to wriggle out of trouble. Trash blocks sent over by a rival’s successful Tetris or Puyo chain won’t immediately clog up your board—you can prevent them from being dumped with a quick match of your own. And when you gain the upper hand, sometimes it pays not to hold back for the perfect drop. A swift double when your opponent is setting up for a big clearance or chain can plug that tantalizing gap with the wrong type of block.
GETTING SCHOOLED
Heading online can be a chastening experience until you’ve had hours of practice, but there’s a bundle of offline modes besides. Fusion splices the two games in a way that just about works, but it’s a distant second to the thrilling Swap mode, which regularly alternates between boards—letting you rack up big points in the one game you’re good at so you’re better equipped to fight fires in the other. And then there are the novelty options like Big Bang, which invites you to clear preset patterns as quickly as possible, and Party, where power-ups can cause a flurry of rapid drops on your opponent’s side, or leave them briefly in the dark.
There’s a sense that a decent Puyo player will always triumph over a Tetris veteran, but otherwise there’s little to fault here. No wonder there’s a burgeoning competitive scene around a game that proves the truth of a familiar maxim: Sometimes the old ones really are the best.
There always seems to be a way to wriggle out of trouble