Lucky 7. And here we are at Puyo Pop Fever. Well, this isn't going to be as much of a review as much as it is going to be me telling you how crazy good this game is. In other words, think of it as a commercial. Well, not to that extent, but kinda sorta. ENOUGH confusion.
This game has quite the history. It started off as Puyo Puyo in Japan, where it was a simple game of popping bubbles. At least, that's what they wanted you to think. If you connect four or more of the same color puyo together, then they pop (a puyo is a colored bubble connected to another puyo of the same or different color). Isn't that fun? Popping bubbles? The average person might take a look at this game and say, "Wow, how simple can you get?" And he would walk away. But some of the smart people in Japan caught on to Sega, and they figured out by putting another color puyo in between groups of 4, they wouldn't pop. And if they repeated this process, you would have a very large chain reaction. In fact, that's what the game calls this occurence: chains. So if you pop 4 puyo with no other chains, you send 1 garbage puyo to the other player's screen, and it can only be destroyed if it touches a group that pops. But if you start a 4 chain reaction, the number of garbage sent over is now around 30. So this was a very efficient way to play and pro players began to analyze the game mechanics in order to become champions. This is what Puyo Puyo looks like:
Puyo Puyo wasn't released in the US at the time, but what we got instead was the same game with a mask over it. It was called Kirby's Avalanche and it was released for the Super Nintendo.
So, yeah. It was the same game. Even the puyo look exactly the same as the puyo in Puyo Puyo. The only main difference is the characters. While Puyo Puyo had it's own set of unique characters, Kirby's Avalanche had...well...Kirby characters. You were Kirby, and you challenged many others in Dreamland to your puzzle game. Waddle Dees, Waddle Doos, Bronto Burts, and many others appeared as opponents. I don't know how difficult this game is, but I imagine that it can't be that far off from Puyo Puyo, because the basic gameplay is the same. But I guess it does make a difference if the AI sucks.
There was another version of Puyo Puyo called Dr. Robotnik's Bean Machine. Yeah. Just the name of the game makes me wanna stop talking about it already.
Few years later, Puyo Puyo was realeased in the US under the name Puyo Pop. It was exactly the same as Puyo Puyo except it was an official English translation. But that wasn't the most important version of the game to make it over to the US.
Released in the US some time after Puyo Pop was Puyo Pop Fever (It was also released in Japan, of course). This was the game's most important installment in the franchise of Puyo Puyo. It still has the basic gameplay from the previous games, but with one big new addition: Fever mode. What is fever mode? So when your opponent sends trash to you, it just hovers above your screen, waiting to drop. If you fail to pop any puyo at all, the trash drops in increments of 30 till the trash runs out. However, if you make puyo pop, or make a chain, you will start to counter the trash count, and the trash assigned to your area will decrease before it can fall. Not only that, but for every chain that you set off while your area is threatened by trash, you earn one offset point (chaining when you have trash over your area is called offsetting). If the offset meter goes full, you go into fever mode. And this is where the game gets really awesome. In fever mode, ready-made chains drop down and all you have to do is ignite it. If you do it correctly, another chain pops down, but with an added link. For example, a 5 chain system comes down, and you pop it correctly and get 5 chains. The next ready-made chain will now have 6 chains, and if you pop it so that you get 6 chains, you get a 7 chain system on your next one. Of course fever mode isn't endless, but it's enough to set your opponent back a bit with trash.
Along with the fever mode, Puyo Pop Fever also came with some new characters, some of which came from the earlier games. The new group includes a music teacher, an onion pixy, a frog, a rabbit thing, a cat/puppet, a concieted fish, a very happy ghost, a pouty student, and a demon-possesed boy. All of them are pretty awesome. My favorite is Oshare Bones because he's a gay skeleton. JUST KIDDING. He's not my favorite. But he really is gay.
When I first played Puyo Pop Fever, it was the Game Boy Advance version - one of the less commonly played ones. It still played the same, though. What was lacking was the graphics and some online play. GBA did have link mode, but it didn't allow you to access the net. Puyo Pop Fever for DS and PC both have online. The single player modes are the same, though.
Recently, I found the PC version of the game and I tried it. It was pretty awesome. There are a few things about it that suck, though. During the cutscenes, the text goes way faster than the voices, and as a result, it cuts them off. This is very confusing to read/watch, so I just skip it. Another thing is that online mode in the PC version takes quite a lot of work to set up. You have to download a bunch of applications just to have online mode.
But overall, Puyo Pop Fever is a very addicting game for many people. It's not that popular in the US, but Asians love it. Korean people and Japanese people play it very competitively like a Starcraft game. It involves quite a bit of thinking, so if you don't like puzzle games or logic-based games, don't play this. If you do, this will be the best game you ever played.
While the American fanbase is quite small, I did manage to find a site that groups the Puyo community together. It's "puyonexus.net" and it really helps to visit if you want to be good, or at least decent, at this game. It's also where you can find the Puyo Pop Fever client and all that good stuff.
Wow I let this post go on forever...sorry if I bored you. Here are the ratings...
Gameplay: 9/10
Controls: 7/10
Difficulty: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Music/Sound: 10/10
Overall: 8.5/10
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