| Capcom Puzzle World review |
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Never ones to miss an opportunity to re-release an old favourite, Capcom Puzzle World sees the company delve into their past to bring us some of those puzzle game classics from their archives. Or, at least, that is what you would expect such an expansively named collection to offer. In reality, it only offers five games, three of which are from the Buster Bros series and only one of which could probably be defined as a classic. Considering that their previous PSP retro collection – Capcom Classics Remixed – included over twenty games, the annoyance is building up before the PSP has even been switched on.
There is no great surprise that once loaded, the menu system directs the player straight to Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, clearly the proverbial diamond in the rough of the collection. A cult arcade classic that was later ported to the Playstation, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, and the GBA. Puzzle Fighter is very much a play on the classic Columns/Puyo Pop style gameplay, but with a competitive angle added.
The game is never played against the clock or against a specific level design: it is always against a rival. When gems are matched, they don’t only disappear from the player’s board. The same number of gems are deposited into the opponent’s board in a pre-set pattern depending on the character chosen. Once one character’s board fills up to the top, they lose.
By pitching the game as a competitive puzzle game rather than just a single player game including such an element, Puzzle Fighter succeeded in adding a little edge and urgency to the puzzle genre. This element of the gameplay still stands up to scrutiny today and makes it a game very much worth playing, especially on the Hard level, where the computer A.I. forces the player to think about gem placement at increasingly breakneck pace.
Whilst Puzzle Fighter does manage to remain relevant in modern times, the same cannot be said for one of the other entrants in Capcom Puzzle World. Block, Block looks and feels every last second of its sixteen-year age. The game is essentially an Arkanoid clone, that is, if Arkanoid featured one of the most overly sensitive paddles ever conceived. The other differentiating feature is that after every ten hits, your paddle shrinks in size, adding additional frustration to an already infuriating task.
The arcade machine featured an analogue ball to move the paddle back and forth, which may go someway to explaining why it has failed to transfer effectively to the PSP. The D-pad provides slow, but, for the most part, steady control over the paddle. Problems only occur when the ball takes unexpected deflections off the side walls or other objects, at which point it is almost impossible to realign the paddle in time to avoid death. The analogue nub is significantly worse, making the paddle whizz by at such a pace that correctly aligning it is an art that is hard to imagine any human being ever mastering.
These issues are made all the more disappointing by the feeling that there is a decent enough game lurking somewhere behind the incredibly dated look and poor controls. The design, although patchy, can throw up some excellent levels, especially those which introduce pinball machine elements such as flickers and tunnels into the equation. It is a pity that these only show up every ten or so levels, as most of the intervening levels are bog-standard, by-the-numbers attempts. In the end, the prevailing feeling is that this game would be better played in an arcade circa 1991.
Fortunately for Block, Block, it has been packaged with Buster Bros and is therefore spared the embarrassment of being the worst game on show here. If Block, Block is dated, then the original Buster Bros is positively archaic. It is hard to imagine Buster Bros ever being popular, although clearly it must have been at some time many moons ago.
The premise is as basic as they come. The player has to use a gun to fire a vertical wire at the bubbles bouncing around above them. As the biggest bubble is shot, it splits into two smaller bubbles, which continue the pattern when shot, until the smallest are shot and disappear. Whilst it may seem that this could be a relatively joyful experience, any such hope is banished the second the game starts.
Awkward movement is at the heart of the game’s problems, making it virtually impossible to dodge the ever-increasing number of bubbles heading your way. There is nothing about the game that begs for another go, as it becomes apparent within a couple of plays that the game engine is bad enough to render the game almost unplayable and saps any iota of enjoyment that could possibly have been gained from playing it.
Buster Bros Returns is essentially the same game with more modes, whereas Buster Buddies offers better graphics and a choice of characters – but unfortunately couples it with the same flawed gameplay that is apparent in the first two titles. As part of a larger collection, a few duds could have been overlooked, but when Buster Bros games account for three fifths of what is on offer it is simply unacceptable.
With such a small amount of games included in the collection, one would assume that extra features would be aplenty. Super Puzzle Fighter includes the Y and Z game types also found in the Dreamcast conversion, both of which offer significantly different game experiences to the original X mode. Perhaps most impressively, the game offers a screenshot function for Super Puzzle Fighter and Buster Buddies, which can be accessed via the pause menu in each game, saving the images to the memory stick as JPEG files.
Multiplayer modes could have added immensely to the value for money offered by this collection, but once again there are clear failings in this area. Whilst Ad-Hoc multiplayer is included, there is no Infrastructure mode for online gaming, which for a collection whose main asset is a competitive puzzle game is almost laughable. Game-Sharing is also not used, meaning that only people whose friends also have a PSP and a copy of the game can play multiplayer matchups. System RAM is usually cited as the reason why more titles don’t include Game-Sharing, but with a collection of old arcade games this shouldn’t be an issue and it is disappointing to see that it has been overlooked.
There is very little to recommend in Capcom Puzzle World. Whilst Super Puzzle Fighter is still a great game, the poor multiplayer options mean that you are better off with one of versions previously released on the home consoles, or one of HD versions making their way to PS3, 360 and PC later this year. The other games are all just filler and Capcom should know better than to think that they can get away with such an ill-conceived collection; definitely one to avoid. |
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System: Sony PlayStation Portable
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Players: 1-2
Version: European
Reviewed: Aug 2007
Writer: Nick Dorrington
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Pros:
- Puzzle Fighter is still brilliant
- Screenshot mode is clever
- Clean presentation
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Cons:
- Only five titles
- Buster Bros and Block, Block feel ancient
- Limited multiplayer options
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