When you think of famous pairs, a few combinations come to mind right away. For example: peanut butter and jelly, pepperoni and pizza, Abbot and Costello, and so on. The world of video games has a few of it’s own, but none quite as constant or consistent as falling block puzzles and handheld gaming machines. The Game Boy had Tetris, the Game Gear had Columns, the PSP has Lumines, and now the DS has Meteos.
Lumines was heralded by many to be one of the best puzzle titles to come out in the last few years, so a lot of people kept Meteos on watch since it was developed by the same team: Q Entertainment. Lumines was about hypnotizing rhythm and a more laid back style of gameplay; Meteos is more about keeping you on your toes and testing your endurance. It’s almost as both games are two parts of a greater picture, and neither loses anything for it.
Color Me Pleased
Meteos is a falling block puzzle game, make no mistake about it. It follows all of the basic structure points for the genre: blocks fall from the sky, and the player has to match them up. If too many blocks fill up the space the player is given, they player loses. It’s how the player clears the blocks from the screen that makes Meteos so different.
"Super Smash Bros. made its mark in the multiplayer arena, and Meteos is destined to do the same."
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Blocks can be moved one at a time, and only vertically. The easiest way to do this is with the stylus, but the option is included for face button control. It’s clear that Meteos was possible on other systems, but wouldn’t have been much fun, since control with the stylus is more accurate, and far quicker than a face button set-up.
You can only move the block as high as the line goes. When three or more blocks of the same color match up horizontally, the line in question rockets into the sky, taking all the blocks above it along for a ride. If there aren’t many blocks on top (which would increase the weight), or there aren’t many blocks raining down on it (which slow it down), it has a good chance of leaving the stage. If not, the player will have to then form more combinations with the blocks already in the air, "refueling" the jet-powered blocks. If the player is unable to do this, the blocks return to the level and you have that many more blocks to deal with.
Should you form a match of three or more vertically, the vertical line takes off, leaving a narrow, but empty space. This is an easy way to clear space earlier on, but as the blocks begin to fall faster, or your opponent starts to fill your level with more of his waste, it’s harder to keep up using this technique alone.
Inter-planetary Puzzle Battle
As I mentioned before, Meteos will set you up against opponents. In the single-player aspect of the game, you have a few modes to choose from, and opponents can be a part of all of them. There’s the standard mode in all puzzle games where you play endlessly, and Meteos has it. While you can just rocket off your Meteos into the depths of space and play as long as you can, you could also set up a computer controlled opponent or three to deal with as well. Your waste would then pile onto their screens, as theirs would onto yours if you were the one they chose to target.
"Meteos isn’t a revolutionary puzzler like many people are saying it is, but it’s a damn good one..."
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However the most single-player enjoyment comes from the games Star Trip mode. Meteos is unique from most puzzlers because it has a cohesive and relevant story, and it’s told through Star Trip. It’s no Final Fantasy, but for a puzzle game this is a major innovation. In this mode you travel from planet to planet on a quest to ultimately reach Planet Meteo, the source of the Meteos. Each planet you arrive at you must defeat in order to move on. When you battle and ultimately defeat Planet Meteos, you’ll get an ending, and there are seven total in the game. Since Star Trip has three different modes, and two of them have multiple paths varying in difficulty, you’ll probably be at it for a while.
My only complaint with Star Trip mode is some of the stipulations they’ll put on winning in harder difficulty paths. The AI is inconsistent, so it’s hard sometimes to string things together properly, and if you prematurely defeat an opponent without meeting the specifications, you’re then sent to a lower path. It increases replayabilty, but it increases frustration.
Super Puzzle Brothers Melee
It’s odd to think a puzzle game could be compared so heavily to a mascot based fighting game, but Meteos is the puzzle game equivalent in almost every way. It’s no surprise either, since Q Entertainment has among their ranks Masahiro Sakurai, formerly of Nintendo’s HAL Studios, and the mastermind behind the N64’s Super Smash Bros.
You first begin to feel the SSB vibes in the amazing CG intro. It’s exciting, it’s fast paced, it’s beautiful, and it’s a great beginning. When you get into the menu system, you begin to feel a sense of deja-vu, because it’s almost as though many of the options were ripped straight from Nintendo’s mascot brawler. Difficulty has a five star level rating, which is fully adjustable by the player, and you’re able to pick a maximum of four opponents, all of varying levels of AI should you choose. The game even keeps statistics of mostly everything you do (amounts of blocks launched, which colors, etc.), again, just like SSB.
"Meteos is about keeping you on your toes and testing your endurance."
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But the likeness between the titles doesn’t stop there. Super Smash Bros. made its mark in the multiplayer arena, and Meteos is destined to do the same. When you start up the game you’re asked to choose a home planet. This planet is the one used to play in single player mode, and it’s also the one used to play with in multiplayer. Different planets have different effects on the meteos (varying degrees of gravity, rocket thrusting differences), and each seem balanced enough to add different strategies, but still play fairly.
Also, several items appear during gameplay (in all modes) that help the player out in a multitude of ways. Some items boost pieces all by them selves, sometimes a giant hammer will appear and clear out large amounts of blocks, as will bombs. Items will also appear that attack you as well, like a smoke screen, also lending a very SSB feeling to the mix, especially since the menu for adjusting which items appear and their frequency is very nearly plagiarized from SSB as well.
A Galaxy of Unlockables
Meteos not only keeps track of how many blocks you launch, but it uses those numbers as a currency to unlock things. Planets to choose from, songs to unlock in a sound test mode, and items to use during gameplay and more are all available for your purchase, if you have the necessary amount of meteos to spend.
Meteos isn’t a revolutionary puzzler like many people are saying it is, but it’s a damn good one, and mostly because of the multiplayer aspect. When viewed along side Lumines it’s easy to see that as long as developers put some thought into what they’re doing, a puzzle game can still be refreshing and entertaining.
