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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 06/20/2007
- Released on: 06/18/2007
- Originally published on GameSpot: Puzzle Scape (PSP) Review
It's only natural that developer Farmind would have looked to Lumines as inspiration for its new PSP puzzle game. After all, the swirling, abstract presentation of that title was exquisitely married to its gameplay, making for a unique experience that's tough to re-create. Puzzle Scape employs pulsing techno music and hallucinogenic artwork in much the same way, but the lack of artistic cohesion in each level makes the gameplay feel oddly disconnected from its presentation. It plays all right and can provide a few hours of mindless entertainment, but it lacks the addictive nature of the finest puzzle games and ultimately comes off as a pretender to the throne.
The gameplay itself is more reminiscent of Tetris Attack than Lumines. A row of colored blocks drops onto the game grid from above, and you combine the blocks into like-colored chains. To do so, you use a two-block-wide cursor to select adjacent blocks and swap their places. Rather than fashion rows or columns of like-colored blocks, however, you must create a two-by-two square to clear them from the screen. Doing so not only destroys the blocks in the square, but those of the same color attached to it. This lets you create a winding string of blocks that you can remove in one blow simply by sliding a single block into the chain to create the necessary square.
The single-player swapping takes place in either architect or artist mode. In architect mode you're given a series of objectives, such as creating a 15-block chain, or clearing 20 blocks of the same color. You earn a medal based on how quickly you meet those goals, which in turn unlocks new levels as well as the current level's artist mode. Artist mode is your standard scoring mode, where you play continuously until one of your columns reaches the top of the screen and there's no room for more blocks to fall.
Power-ups like the ability to remove two rows of blocks or slow down time are more welcome enhancements to the standard gameplay, particularly in the more difficult stages. Once you hit the seventh or eighth level within a given theme, Puzzle Scape gets pretty challenging, and it will take you a while to clear your goals and unlock artist mode, let alone earn that elusive gold medal. Not all of the power-ups are created equal, though, and it's frustrating to get nothing but slo-mo so often in the early levels when you don't need it, and wish for it and never get it in later levels, when blocks fall at a much faster pace. Others, like the one that randomly rearranges all the blocks, rarely have an effect on the game in progress and seem to be there just for the sake of being there.
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