Techtite's "Portables" Reviews!

"A bit too complex for the younger demographic, though for the Hannah Mantana or High School Musical Disney fan in your family, this is even better than the original game."

---from the review

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Sidebar :

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Pros: Fully touch-screen based arcade-style puzzle game played "sideways" to give the classic elongated feel of a classic arcade game. A menagerie of classic Disney films saluted as their own separate "Meteos" style puzzle boards (see the review)...

Cons:  While the easy mode is easy enough, it isn't as diverse as the harder modes, meaning young kids who want to unlock "Pirates of the Caribbean" or the like might get very frustrated with the harder (much harder!) difficulty levels, intended for the older, teen Disney fans.

No sidebar comments for this review. Yet...

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Meteos: Disney Magic

Click picture to order this game (DS)

A Techtite Review

Much like you, I've come across this game in many a bargain bin, wondering if I should get what appears to be, at first glance, an intriguing spin on the original Meteos puzzle game. Just prior to a vacation to Walt Disney World recently, I thought; what better addition to my family's Nintendo DS collection than this? Surprisingly, this was not as much of an impulse purchase as you might think. This game is not only as good as the original Meteos; it's actually a better version, in many ways.

For those who never played the original Meteos: It was a game made by the same puzzle mastermind who created Lumines for the PSP. Much like Lumines, the game utilized the unique traits of the game system it was made for, to create a unique puzzle experience. The touch screen was used in the bottom screen as blocks slowly fell from the top screen; the object was to match three to five boxes with the same texture on them. The catch: you had to get the blocks to launch up and off the screen, based on the weight of the blocks. So while three lone blocks would shoot off the screen easily; shooting six or more blocks meant matching six or more blocks at once. It might sound a bit complicated to kids who might play this game, though a tutorial on how to play is pretty rudimentary and you'll be a Meteos master in a very short time.

It makes sense that the difference between this "Meteos" and the original is a Disney theme. Yet here's where the game is even cooler: the game designers saw how this game is best played with a longer screen, not necessarily a "double" screen. So they made the game played with the DS "sideways," which allows for larger blocks and a longer playing field, in just the touchscreen itself. Not unlike a storybook, animated Disney characters appear on the left screen as you play, with their expressions changing based on how well you are playing.

You might ask what sort of "Disney" characters/games are included. Not only are the obligatory popular Disney characters like The Little Mermaid and Cinderella present, though also Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Other playing board include Lilo & Stitch, The Lion King, Toy Story, and so on.

The good news for older gamers: there are harder levels. The bad news for younger gamers: you might have to play these harder levels to unlock the "older" Disney characters, like Jack Sparrow's Pirates of the Caribbean or Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas. The good news however, is that while there is an "Extras" menu option that slowly unlocks animations and background art and music from the game, these extras are unlocked by quantity of play, not the level of play. So kids can feel free to play the "beginners" level of difficulty again and again and unlock every extra that's available, without having to play the harder difficulty levels once.

If there's one flaw with this formula, its how steep of a difficulty curve there is. Even "normal" difficulty is surprisingly hard, even for this adult, diehard puzzle game fan. It might have behooved the designers of this game to have at least one additional difficulty level which was only slightly harder than "beginner" yet with the same number of levels as the harder levels. I liked, for example, how the harder levels have multiple choices for each "level." You can, for example, choose to play a mission to "eliminate 400 blocks of the same color," or "defeat all your (computer) opponents in 2 minutes." The beginner mode is entirely linear with no such options. You have to complete the linear path and that is all. Yet the harder levels offer more options, at a steeper difficulty curve. Why not offer the same multiple choices of game levels, with the same difficulty curve? It's a game design flaw that might frustrate younger gamers, who want the additional levels in beginner mode, yet cannot reach them as easily as they would in the harder game levels. For a Disney game, it seems a bit "off" that the game designers made the game this way.

Yet Meteos always was a fun DS-exclusive puzzle game, and the designers of this game made it into something special. If you love Disney, you really need to give Meteos: Disney Magic a look. Even if you only like Disney; you might enjoy this game for its challenging game play. If you don't like Disney, well...you're missing out on a surprisingly good game here.

---Techtite