Puyo Pop Fever Review

Puyo Pop Fever is the latest in the long-running series of falling blob puzzle games. This time it’s arrived on the PSP, and while it’s a perfectly nice little puzzle game that does exactly what you’d want a Puyo Pop game to do, it’s simply re-treading old ground. New gameplay modes or not, and as enjoyable as the core gameplay is, you’ll have played this game before – or something remarkably similar.

The basic gameplay revolves around coloured blobs (Puyos) that fall down the screen on the playing grid. You must link up four or more same-coloured Puyos in order to remove them from your screen, and you gain bonus points by creating chains – where the removal of a set of Puyos causes another set to be removed, and so on. Played against a human or AI opponent, chains are vital, as your removed Puyos are transferred to your opponent’s screen, as colourless nuisance Puyos that can only be removed when others are removed around them.

The Fever tacked on to the end of the game title refers to Fever mode. When triggered during a normal game, your grid turns slightly psychedelic and you enter a slightly alternate game mode. Instead of gradually placing Puyos to build up chains, you’re presented with grid after grid, where a single well placed Puyo can clear the whole screen. The pace is faster than the standard game, so you’ll need to think quickly, but make the most of it and your opponent will be in serious trouble.

The main single-player modes pits you against each of the characters in the game, with victory moving you on to the next battle. A few story-like elements are used to give the impression that you’re doing more than playing a series of bots, but the illusion is a thin one. Endless mode is also on offer, where you must play for as long as possible, attempting to stop the Puyos from reaching the top of the grid.

Multiplayer is where the game comes into its own, but compared to the DS release which offers support for eight players on a single game card, the PSP game’s two-player (two UMD) mode feels a little weak. There is some good news, though, in the shape of a two-player mode playable on a single PSP. With each player getting an end of the PSP, the controls are a little cramped, but if the more costly multi-system and multi-game two-player mode isn’t an option, this does a good job.

Puyo Pop Fever goes for cuteness over outstanding technical achievement in visuals, and judged by the standards of other puzzle games, it doesn’t look bad at all. Colours are bold, and the characters are well designed, making for a game that’s very easy on the eye. Audio can become a little tedious, but no more so than any puzzle game that you’d play endlessly for hours.

As far as block or blob-based puzzlers go, Puyo Pop Fever is perfectly adequate, but the PSP happens to have a few better alternatives: Lumines offers a more classy experience, while Koloomn is a more original title, and one that will take every brain cell to master. If you’re after a straightforward falling blob puzzler, look no further, but there’s very little here that you won’t have seen before.