Puyo Pop

Hands up who had or played Dr. Robotnics Mean Bean Machine on the MegaDrive? What about Kirby's Avalanche on the Super Nintendo? Pah. Just me then? Thought so. I'll explain. The aim of the game is to link four of the titular "Puyos" of the same colour together. Once linked, they POP! The Puyos drop in randomly coloured pairs from the top of the screen, and if the screen fills up the game is over. Chains can be performed if more than one set of four Puyos vanishes before the next pair drop. Upon scoring a chain, an Ojama drops on the opponents' side of the screen, these have no colour and can only be removed by getting four adjacent Puyos to pop! Many Ojama can be achieved by scoring bigger chains. Got it? Good. On to the review proper.

As it's a puzzle game, the graphics are simple. The Puyos are small but well defined. Whats that? Oh, you don't like the Puyos, you can't tell them apart. That's fine. You can select the appearance of the Puyos from over a dozen looks. A great touch. Oh yeah, you can select the background in which you play as well. The game selection and menu screens are really nice and although just eye candy, add to the overall feel to the game, this is the most polished looking puzzle title to date.

The sound is good, there's a load of speech in there and there's no annoying in game tune. YES! But that's all.

The game is great. The controls are simple, the game fast and furious. The CPU opponents put up a great fight. One minute you can have the CPU backed against a wall, the next the CPU gets an awesome chain switching the whole tide of the game. There are a good lot of opponents too. If you get bored with them, you can have the computer grade you in the "Self Test" mode or play a friend. Whatever you play, you are guaranteed to have hours of fun. This is a game that's worth the asking price, but what if you have Puzzle Bobble? Well this is significantly different enough to warrant a purchase. But is it better than Puzzle Bobble? Well the grade says it all YES it's better. It gets the extra .5 of a mark because its more polished and, for me anyway, the better game. If you love puzzle games, then get this as you are going to love it, if you are stuck between this and Puzzle Bobble, go for this, you won't be disappointed, the little extras like being able to select the appearance of the Puyos edge it in front. Sorted. Respect due.