Jun 27, 3:51 pm
... When it’s Puzzle Quest on the DS!
Actually, that’s a rather lazy comparison. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, released in the UK back in March, owes far more to its block-busting cousin, Zoo Keeper. With a screen filled to the brim with a variety of colourful spheres, it’s the players job to touch and swap them (using the DS’s stylus, of course) to create chains. Get a chain of three identical-coloured spheres or more and the chain disappears. Straight forward, right? Just your bog standard puzzle game, right? Not quite.
Puzzle Quest has attempted the peculiar task of giving a fairly linear genre a bit of substance. It does this by introducing traditionally RPG-like elements. Start up a game and you are immediately asked to choose a character from a range of sword ‘n’ sorcery-type folk, ranging from wizards to warriors. Each character has a range of strengths and weakness, including a range of spells. Spells are generated by releasing ‘mana’ - essentially those colourful little spheres we all like to destroy so much. You can then cast these spells to either help your character or hinder your opponent. Damage your character enough and you win the match - hurrah! Fairly simple, right? But wait - there’s more.
Taking RPG-elements one step further, your character is awarded experience points for each match you participate in. These experience points contribute towards stats - a staple-diet of any respectable RPG fan - such as battle or magic skills, as well as being able to equip armour, build fortifications and capture opponents. Puzzle Quest fleshes out a sweet little storyline too. Between bouts of block-busting madness, you find yourself on a world map, moving your little character into neighbouring towns, villages and fortifications, talking to characters and taking on quests - from delivering an important message to a King along a monster-choked road, or rescuing a damsel in distress from a nasty couple of ogres. Granted, it may not be Shakespeare - the plot is incredibly basic. We’re talking dialogue like “Thank you for your assistance mighty Warrior!” and characters called Darkhunter. But with more than 150 quests in single player and a multiplayer mode on offer, it’s a great little game and a nice twist on the standard puzzle genre. It’s also available on the PSP.
Spheres at the ready, folks!
