Pokémon Puzzle League

How many Pikachus does it take to stack a column? Let's look at the evidence shall we? Pokémon is probably the biggest toy phenomenon of (at least) the last ten years... possibly the biggest this century (er, or the last one, rather). You can buy toys, collect cards, watch the television show or even see the movie! You can wash your hair in their shampoo, collect them on your Game Boy Color, photograph them on your N64, eat their chocolate bars, read their books, stick them up on your bedroom wall or snuggle down into your Pokémon duvet. Log onto the web site, trade and swap them with your friends, they can wake you up in the morning, they'll hang from your house keys, stick on the inside window of your car. You can wear them, stick things in them and one day, ONE DAY, possibly even worship them alongside such icons as The Beatles, Monty Python or (erm) The Spice Girls. If world domination is their ultimate plan then there hasn't been a Bond villain yet who has come as close as Pokémon have to that dream. They are here. Get used to it!

Blockbuster!

Once again, those small, collectable, odd-looking, fighting monsters known as Pokémon are gracing the screens of your television set courtesy of a brand-new game for your N64! Lately, the Pokémon licence has been put on nearly everything under the sun to make someone that all-important dollar/pound (as the above list showed), and that's only the tip of the iceberg). Despite this cynical attitude, Nintendo – to be fair – hasn't just slapped those adorable creatures on (almost) any old thing. Even if you have to question the tenuous link between Pokémon and what is basically a variation on Tetris, with Pokémon Puzzle League they at least haven't made a shoddy mess of the whole affair! In fact, as puzzle games go this is quite a smart package.

Since you have to justify why the Pokémon gang are playing with multicoloured blocks, the story behind this latest adventure goes something like this... Ash is relaxing by the pool with his small yellow friend when he gets a call from Professor Oak to go to the Puzzle League Village to further his own Pokémon training! So he heads to where a whole new challenge awaits him, along with a few surprises! Even if you can't swallow that, don't worry too much, because once you get to the village you'll become so engrossed in the game that for all you care it could be Tony Blair's Puzzle League!

All right, so it may just be a rehash of that familiar Tetris formula, but as rehashes go, this is an extremely good one. Instead of moving linked blocks of four as they descend down the screen, with this game you must instead slide pairs of blocks from side to side, so that they join with other blocks of the same colour. When you form a line of three or more they disappear, earning you points and increasing the difficulty level in the process! As you can guess, combos, advanced techniques and chains score you extra points while in two-player games, or challenges with the other characters, the bigger the combo the better the handicap you put on your opponent, causing extra blocks – or 'garbage' as they are known in the game – to appear on their grid. The quick but tricky way is to form a line of three Poké Balls, which sticks a hard grey line right across the opponent's grid! However, this also works in your enemy's favour too, so during the game things can become fast, furious and hectic.

Hip To Be Square

Playing in one-player mode is enough fun as it is with an endless supply of blocks to fight through but the real challenge of the Puzzle League is to beat the other trainers. Taking up a similar design to Pokémon Stadium, in this game you play against another trainer and pit your chosen monster against theirs as you battle through a number of rounds. Each time you win a round you get a medal and when you collect enough medals you become the Puzzle League Master. Depending upon the difficulty level, the characters you play against change, as do the creatures! All of these levels provide a particularly challenging and engaging mode of play but that is not all that the game has to offer! You may also play this game with a friend, and challenge each other using the same rules as in two-player against the computer. There are also a wide variety of different game styles! In the Puzzle University you have to really use your brain, and in the Spa Service section Team Rocket has stolen your Pokémon critters, and you must fight to get them back! There are also games that set you against the clock and games that can go on practically forever, provided that you can last that long!

Line Dancing

For a game that doesn't really demand great graphics, Pokémon Puzzle League still manages to look glorious. Fans of the television series will be delighted to see that at the beginning of the game there is a short piece of animation that looks as though it has been taken directly from the show itself! The overall look of the game is bright, colourful and imaginative and is extremely faithful to the image of the Pokémon world!

“The overall look of the game is bright, colourful and imaginative” The designers have managed to take the already recognisable elements of a puzzle game like this and mix them together with the iconography of those crazy creatures that now appear on lunchboxes and T-shirts all over the world!

As far as the controls go, pretty-much anyone could just pick up a controller and instantly get into the game without having to get their heads around what buttons to press! As well as being quite a simple concept, the game also has in-built tutorials that teach you how to play and what moves to look out for. Although anyone who is a big fan of puzzle games will probably already know how to create a combo (or whatever), for younger players these pointers can be extremely helpful, especially if the idea of reading through the instruction book is rather off-putting! The controls react quickly to the moves you want to make and there is practically nothing about the gameplay that can be faulted.

Chain Reaction

The only major complaint – and to be honest a rather trivial one – is that the music and speech can get very annoying. Although sound quality is superb, during the game your ears are bombarded with music that sounds like the kind of infernal racket you'd expect to hear in a supermarket or a lift! The speech is a nice touch to begin with, but it takes very little time at all to get sick of the voices crying “I’m going to win”, “Better luck next time” and “Nice challenge” over and over again! Fortunately both of these problems can be eliminated by going to the options screen. As an overall package the game offers tons of options with well-designed areas for you to explore. Although a rather obvious cash-in, Pokémon Puzzle League is at least an addictive and diverting one and if you're a fan of this kind of game then this one should definitely keep you happy during the long dark nights ahead!

University Of Hard Knockers

If simply swapping multicoloured blocks around like a madman is not your idea of a truly good time then take a trip to the Puzzle University where your mind will not only be taxed but probably clamped and given a parking ticket! By utilising all the brain power you can muster, you must attempt to clear the screen of all blocks within a certain number of moves. Trust us on this one: it is a lot harder than it looks. If you are looking for a longer term challenge then this is the test for you to pass. There is, thankfully, an option for you to create your own puzzles to see if your friends can beat them. Just make sure that you can do them first!

Pint sized puzzles

You haven't got an N64 (in which case: why did you buy this mag?) but you still want to get your hands on this addictive puzzler? If so, then you'll no doubt be pleased to hear that lucky Game Boy Color owners will be able to stick their own 8-bit version of Pokémon Puzzle League into their portable pal and play with it on long car/train/coach (tick where appropriate) journeys. Perfect time-passing fun!

Badge Of Honour...

When you play against another trainer, on whatever difficulty setting you choose to tackle, the object is win as many matches and collect as many medals as possible to beat the world Puzzle Master become the Puzzle League Champion!

It’s another Pokémon cash-in alright… but a damn good one! By now it’s probably fair to say that most people know about Pokémon. Even parents – that cross-section of society who are usually totally unaware of any current trends until about six months after they’ve ended, at which time they embrace them with aplomb – have had time to become familiar with the whole Pokémon phenomenon, even if it’s only so they can stop little Jonnie from swapping his ultra-rare limited edition gold ‘Mew With One Eye Missing’ (value £300) for his 27th ‘Basic Charizard’ (value 5p).

As Nintendo enthusiasts, we’ve been surfing the edge of the Pokémon wave, with a number of different games featuring the little monsters rearing their respective heads. Some have been great, some have been fairly average, some have been complete pants. The latest title to arrive – fortunately – fits quite neatly into the first category.

New Pokémon On The Block

Pokémon Puzzle League is… well, a puzzle game (surprise, surprise) and – if truth be told – the fact that it’s got Pokémon in it isn’t really important, unless you happen to be really into them. Essentially it’s a simple yet hugely addictive game, for which the Pokémon characters are just window-dressing. That said, the game is very slickly presented, and let’s face it: judging by their popularity, having Pokémon in this title isn’t exactly going to harm sales, now is it?

The story behind the game (for you can’t have a Pokémon title without some kind of a storyline) is that you – or rather Ash and Pikachu – have been invited to compete in something called the Pokémon Puzzle League (hence the name of the game). Quick as a flash, Ash and you can within a set time; line clear mode – clear a number of lines of blocks down to and below a set level; and of course the one and two-player head-to-head mode. In the latter two game-types, if you manage to achieve any large chains of blocks or succeed in setting off a chain reaction (by making a group of blocks disappear, thus dropping more blocks to make another group, and so on) then you send obstacles over to your opponent’s screen in the form of huge blocks which dramatically increase the height of their stack.

The gameplay is fast and – on the higher difficulty levels – fairly furious, but if you fancy a break from quick-fire action you can always mosey on over to the Puzzle University where a different style of game awaits. Here you are given specific arrangements of blocks and a specific number of moves to clear the screen. While this might sound simple, the game designers have obviously spent a lot of time figuring out the block formations and after the first few simple puzzles you find that they start to get real tricky, real quick!

Puzzletastic!

Pokémon Puzzle League is a fantastically addictive game in one-player and even more so in two-player head-to-head, and the puzzle mode should keep you coming back for more long after you tire of the fast-paced action modes. Particularly as you can – if you so wish – design your own puzzles to fox your friends.

There are only really two things worthy of criticism. The first is that the gameplay may be too simple, so that after a while many people might become a little bored of the repetition – however this is true of just about any puzzle game you care to mention. The second, far more major gripe, is with the music. Quite simply, this has some of the most annoying music ever heard in a videogame! Not all of it’s bad, but some of it – particularly the stuff that plays in the Puzzle University – is downright appalling. Think Des O’Connor Sings Elevator Classics and you’ve got the general idea. The music and simplicity of the game aside (by its very nature it’s repetitive, after all) this is a top title and one for all puzzle games fanatics out there. And you don’t even have to like Pokémon to enjoy it!

Those Pokemon have got their tentacles into practically every market and now they're taking it one step further with Pokemon Puzzle League. The gameplay is like most other puzzlers: simple! Basically the idea is to match three blocks of the same colour to make them disappear. Of course the complexity comes when you start going for combos but the fun and basic gameplay should make this game a sure fire hit with Pokemon fans of all ages.

First Impressions

Come on... read between the lines! Pokemon Puzzle League is nothing more than a variation on Tetris, only with Pokemon graphics slapped on it! We've all seen the game before, but once you start playing you just get hooked all over again! The game is particularly playable as a two-player battle.