Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday: Puzzle Quest and Yaris… wait, what?
Before I talk about Puzzle Quest, I should mention that the other arcade release this week is titled “Yaris” and according to Microsoft is “a quick, fast and easy-to-learn game that puts players behind the wheel of a customizable Toyota Yaris to destroy enemies, avoid obstacles, and finish the course before it finishes them.” Hmm, having played car company marketing efforts like Ford and GM driving simulators, I’m not expecting much from this title. Although, since this is more or less a Toyota marketing ploy, the game IS free. So, you get what you pay for.
But Puzzle Quest… I have so many mixed feelings about this title. This is easily the most played title on my DS, and I’ve got a few misgivings about how this will translate to the Xbox. I personally believe that the DS’s touch interface is the perfect way of manipulating the simple Bejeweled-like gameplay. It’ll be interesting to see how it feels with a 360 controller.
I also think that as a casual game, I’ll probably still prefer this game on my handheld, as being able to pick it up and play anywhere is a big advantage. When I’m sitting at my 360, there are a lot of other titles I’d rather be playing, but I could see Puzzle Quest on XBLA become a backdrop for my podcast-listening each week. We shall see…
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I had some doubts about the PSP version of Puzzle Quest, though, but it worked well. You use the d-pad to move the cursor around, push a button to pick a tile, and then push the d-pad in the direction of what you want to swap it with.
I could definitely see the draw of a touch screen, but after I saw just how ugly the game looked on the DS compared to what I’d experienced on the PSP and the PC demo frankly I wouldn’t trade away the good looks for it.
Of course the PSP version also has that bug where your pet or sidekick animal or whatever doesn’t give you the bonuses it should, something they should have recalled the game for and fixed but didn’t (to my knowledge) even though it’s apparently a small problem. I didn’t get far enough to get a pet in the game when I rented it.
The 360 version looks as nice as the PSP and PC demo versions so that’s really nice. I’m sure it’ll do well with the casual crowd what voice chat and leaderboard support. I’m guessing it’ll have online multiplayer modes too, right?
All Corps are jumping on the gamer bandwagon to reach out to us and…well, sell us crap we don’t really want!
What the hell happened to Undertow & The Tron games?
Whoever at Microsoft keeps picking these puzzle games needs to pick up a severance check.
Yeah there have been quite a few lackluster games out lately. Guess they have to meet quotas
Yah the PSP is much better for puzzle games