E3: Pokémon Puzzle League impressions

[05.16.00] » Tetris Attack + money-printing license = successful puzzle game.

   Nintendo's ever-expanding Pokémon franchise, eager to metastasize into every possible aspect of gaming culture, staked its claim in the puzzle game arena at this year's E3. Originally "Pokémon Attack" and renamed "Pokémon Puzzle League," the game is an almost-perfect clone of the SNES's Tetris Attack with a few new surprises.

   Gamers who hail Tetris Attack as the peak of puzzle gaming will be pleased at PPL's extraordinarily faithful reproduction of its predecessor's gameplay. The new title sports both a 2D and a 3D mode; of these, the former is an exact duplicate of the SNES title. The latter has a new twist: instead of the traditional planar playing field, the player swaps blocks around on the surface of a cylinder. The cursor remains fixed in the center of the screen, and moving left or right rotates the cylinder behind it.

   Although the 2D mode is a true reproduction of the classic, the 3D mode has a few inherent gameplay difficulties: searching for combos and chains becomes more difficult, since moving left or right causes all the blocks to move across the screen. At high speeds, this can be very difficult for the eye to follow. In addition, the cylindrical playing field creates some problems with viewing the stack as a whole: whenever you rotate it, bringing more blocks into view, the blocks on the other side of the screen rotate out of view. Thus, at any given moment, the player cannot see half his workspace. Thus, there is a limit to how much strategy one can apply here.

   Fans of the SNES title beware: the characters that gave the original such spice, such as the fearsome Kamek or the all-powerful Poochie, have been supplanted by the newer, more popular Pokémon. When you make a combo or chain, the awe-inspiring "bark-bark!" has been replaced by "Pika! Pika!", which has decidedly less impact.

   Pokémon Puzzle League, while complete in most aspects of its basic gameplay, promises a few more modes in the final version. At present, it does not have the puzzle mode of its predecessor, although one will be included at release. Other information about this title, including release date and information about other modes of gaming, should soon follow.