First off, when you boot the game you’re welcomed by Capybara’s “mascot” (so to speak) for the game: Biggs. The loveable little “critter” smiles and winks at you. Beckoning you to press start to continue into the game, or wait for the demo reel to start to show you gameplay footage. On the first boot-up, you are locked out from most of the game modes, besides “adventure mode,” for single-player.

Local and Online co-op and versus play, however, are unlocked from the get-go…

To continue on, the singleplayer “adventure” mode is your standard story mode for puzzle games. Upon starting it up, you are welcomed to a wonderfully hand-drawn 2D art cutscene explaining a few things about what the Biggsliocaucus, or “Biggs” for short, creatures do “every Spring. The male Biggs going out to eat the Crittacocephalus, or “Critters” as they are known. Their sons accompanying them to see how they’re fathers are efficient to the Critter’s eco-system while bringing food home to his family on the other side of the island.”

After that cutscene, you are on a map letting you choose (as you unlock more of them) spots to go to to find more puzzles. Starting off with the tutorial and going from there.

Gameplay-wise, the game is a basic “match three” puzzler, with a twist. You feed “two smaller critters to one bigger critter” to “make them pop.” It’s an interesting mechanic and as you ‘pop more critters” you start to fill up a “hunger gauge.” Your goal, at least in this mode is to fill up the Hunger Bar to beat the level.

Sounds easy, right? Well the game’s tutorial level even explains the challenge. You must do this while the game continues to bring more critters into the lines of the gameplay table. If a critter reaches Biggs/passes the line… like Tetris, the game will be over.

The gameplay mechanics are easy enough that even kids should be able to pick-up and enjoy Critter Crunch on the first go, with maybe with a little explanation/help from the parents for kids the age of five to eight.

There is a “food chain” mechanic where popping a critter near similar other critters will also make them pop. This seems to be a strategic advantage in having the board clear without the player being overwhelmed.

“Food chains” seem to also happen when you feed one smaller critter to a bigger critter and have that “full” bigger critter be fed to an even bigger critter. Good for speedy clearing of the board.

Like Tetris and other puzzle games, there is a “quick drop” option for Critter Crunch. Unlike those games, this “speeds the next line up” in dropping so you can pop more critters. This is achieved with the D-pad down button.

Also, funny enough your “Son, Smalls” will show up when you chain an 8-Critter pop-combo (for lack of better words). You then have the ability to “feed” your son by “barfing into his mouth” with rainbow barf. Yes, you read that right. You feed your child with rainbow barf. Unfortunately, you have to be quick about doing this, as “Smalls is impatient, so be quick about it” as the aptly named “Barfing Tutorial” mentions. Thankfully, so long as Biggs mouth is empty of Critters, you can simply go over to Smalls and press the circle button on your Dual-Shock 3 to barf/feed your son.

The twist to feeding your son is that if you do it quickly enough and “fill him up on his first visit” you will max your points out. The catch is, that by feeding your son, the critters will also drop faster as they are “attracted to the barf.”

Feeding Smalls on his first visit also means that you don’t need to have him appear again to feed him (to reach his max) again. You won’t have to feed him again for that level once he reaches his max. If he doesn’t reach his max, you can simply call him back out by gaining another 8-pop-chain.

Achievement wise: The game has two online achievements (Play and win a versus mode match, and reach level 5 in versus mode), with the rest being singleplayer. The achievements seem easy to do, in theory but in practice some of them (like “World Greatest Dad”) will be hard to master.

To move into the multiplayer: The ranked multiplayer matches are like Tetris. You match Critters to pop them to gain power-ups to screw over your opponents. Simple, but the game becomes fast and furious between both players to fill the other players play field to the point of winning. (Though, there is a hunger meter in the two player mode, maybe another way to win is by filling that up quickly. I can’t say at the time of writing.)

Graphically, the game is very pretty with hand-drawn art. I would wager to say that I think Capybara’s art-department needs a pay-raise. At 1080p (though an HDMI cable is required to reach this resolution) the game is gorgeous with the hand-drawn art. Biggs is charming in animation and the game reeks of cuteness.

Overall, the game is a nice addition to the PSN library and if you enjoy puzzle games it is easily worth the $7USD (at the time of writing) to buy. Unfortunately, I have to mention there is no color-blind option (though talking to Capybara, they are “thinking about patching it into the PS3 version”), so if you are color-blind you may have a little trouble with the game (since there are some Critters that are similar in color to other Critters).

If you aren’t completely satisfied with just the game, they are also offering some cute T-shirts at this link. Very cute T-shirts with a catchy “hey, what’s the game your advertising?” twist.

I want to thank Capybara Games for giving me the opportunity to review their game.

Pro:
+ Controls really well. I was expecting some awkward superpower controls or something, but getting around the city was really quick and easy.
+ There are some collectibles around that may take you a bit of time to get.
+ The achievements in the game are really easy to get. Taking about five days tops to get.

Cons:

- Pop-in is pretty noticeable, especially when you’re grinding the rails around the city and having textures pop-in. Not game breaking, but like Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 it’s noticeable.
- Horrible respawn locations for when you die. I could be on another island and die somewhere on that island have all the medic/re-spawn locations unlocked on that island… but, the game decides to spawn me back on another island clear across from where I was. What the hell?
- The plot is almost entirely terrible. When it ends (Terminator 2 style) it could only be saved if they had given Cole some cool sunglasses before… (spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers)
- There is no in-game statistics menu. To find how many shards/stunts you have done you most likely have to view the save on your XMB. Which is pretty damn stupid, Sucker Punch. Every other sandbox game has an in-game stats menu option. Why is Sucker Punch doing things differently?
- And viewing the stats is a hassle considering you have to do the one they list on the pause menu before you can find out what any of the other 21 stunts are.

Buy/Rent/Don’t play: Rentable at best. Playable but frustrating at worse.

Rent it since the game can be beaten in about 1-2 days of heavy play. There is minimal replay value in playing through the story again and when the game ends all you’re left with is a sandbox mode for finding collectibles.

Let me start by saying I loved playing Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords/Revenge of the Plague Lord. With problems and all that on the PSP, the XBLA release was alright and fixed a majority of the bugs. The PS3 version is fine as well minus the infamous (for this version only) music bug. There was a Nintendo DS version that had a battle bug (the first turn had the same layout of gems no matter the battle). I’m not knowledgeable about the Mac/PC versions but I hear they’re okay if somewhat buggy as well.

So, it comes as a complete shock to me that Infinite Interactive went into the boardroom and said “gee, how can we totally alienate players in our sci-fi RPG/puzzle sequel?”

The answer: Leap gates. THOUSANDS OF THEM (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still). The most annoying mini-game in the game is the one you will play constantly to move across the galaxy of Galactrix.

For this reason alone, a lot of players stopped playing the sequel to Puzzle Quest. I can’t fault them. What with the challenge of having to match 20-25 matches in a sequence and hope to god the timer doesn’t continue to tick down if you get an unnecessary cascade of matches going. (and yes, if you get all the required matches and your cascade goes on after that and the timer hits zero, guess what? YOU FAIL THE HACK DESPITE YOU WINNING IT!)

Besides that, Galactrix adds in some new mini-games, noteable addition number one: Haggling. Now if you go to a store (and have the party member that does haggling) you can haggle for lower prices (during that menu visit) through a “get most of the gems off the board” mini-game. It’s a nice addition and if you do well you can get a 2.00-17.00% discount in the store during your visit. (If you leave and come back, you have to rehaggle)

Crafting has changed to the hex-based (that this version uses for all puzzles) mini-game and… thankfully, doesn’t require you to get ONLY anvil/hammers like Challenge of the Warlords. It does throw obstacles at you, meanwhile. Overall though, it is less luck-based and can mostly get you out of crap positions to finish crafting items.

Mining is yet another mini-game (one that you’ll probably do more than the others with the exception of leapgates) that’ll give you materials that you can use to craft items or sell to stores to improve your faction rating.

To move away from the mini-games, the stats system of Challenge of the Warlords has been simplified to where on level-up instead of having 6 stats and only 4 skill points to help you improve them, you now have 5 skill points and 4 skills to level up. The main upgrade to this is after high-level play you can have nearly all even stats with a few stand-out skills/stats for your character. No need to buy a citadel and use gold to get the rest of the skill points you need to improve your character more.

Item wise, the game has its share of game breaking items (and this is just for multiplayer!) that Challenge of the Warlord was famous for. The most exciting is the “Time Warp” items, which based on a certain stat means your enemy will not get a certain amount of turns in. Freeing you up to set them up for bombs and novas.

The battles in the game are still as addictive (and seems to be slightly less random/ZOMG AI IS CHEATING!) as Challenges. If you can wrap your head around the “no-gravity” system that Infinite Interactive added, you can get some good cascades going and roll into your opponent depending on how the gems fall.

Online wise: The game is dead, deader than doornail dead. Irony being, the game has only been out for a couple weeks on PSN alone. It was stupid of D3/II for including online achievements/trophies in the game, esp. after the amount of backlash about the DS/PC versions being really buggy scared away potential buyers of this version (as did the leapgate hacks). It’s even more damning when you consider the XBLA version of Challenge requires you to win only ONE online game (which is easy if you have a friend able to throw the game), but Galactrix wants you to win 50 in it’s barren online mode.

Still, if you can weather most of the annoyances, the game is a gem and brings some neat ideas to the table. But for $20, and after loving the hell out Challenge it’s disappointing that I can’t recommend this to everyone but the most hardcore/masochists that want a Puzzle Quest sequel.

Despite the Music Bug in the PS3 version and the unbalances in the DS/PSP versions of it, Challenge of the Warlords (and it’s expansion: Revenge of the Plague Lord) is still the superior outing for this series. Grab that if you’re looking to find out what everyone back in 2006 was going on about.

Buy/Don’t Buy: Don’t buy. Play the one trick pony flash demo that is more fun that the PC/XBLA demo that is the full game itself. The flash demo is just a random battle that should show you why the original was loved (since that was where the focus of Challenge of the Warlords stayed).

(Mostly because Dr. Time asked me to do this and I’m not really in the huge mood to write after comments thinking I’m “talking shit” about the console with Spider-Mans’ double chins has a blurry as fuck game…)

Notable:

Bionic Commando: Rearmed (remake of the NES game) is $4.99 ($5) this week. 50% off it’s price. One week only.

[Bionic Commando is awesome -ed]

Siren: Blood Curse has ONE WEEK LEFT at $29.99 ($30) before it turns into $39.99 again.

Rag-Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic is FREE ($0) for THIS WEEK ONLY.

Playstation Home wise: The apartment is out for FREE now and it’s a limited time only offer. If you’re wanting a new space, go grab it?

PSX game wise: Spyro: Year of the Dargon (the third/last game by Insomniac) is out on PSN today. As is SNK’s King of Fighters: 1999/’99. Both are $4.99.

Playstation Home Today has the information and screen shot grabs from the latest Pulse. This space is FREE and time-exclusive to the next couple of weeks (when it launches) and then it’s GONE forever. Be sure to grab it if you’re into Playstation Home.

And grab Siren: Blood Curse if you want a survival horror game in the style of Silent Hill. The whole 9 gig game is being sold at $29.99 ($30, $10 less than it’s normal price) or the episodes are being sold at $9.99 ($10, across three episode bundles). These prices are only good for two weeks (starting yesterday) so get it while you can?

And have the “living legend Solid Snake” hold your clothes while you do that.

All while touching yourself–wait, what?!

Today (well, yesterday, so sue me) is the (fictional) day that Metal Gear Solid 2′s “Plant” chapter takes place and the world gets to know Rose’s incessant bitching to her boyfriend who is green on his first mission.

And “I hear it’s amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm, in flap-jaw space, with the tuning fork, does a raw blink on Hiri-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!”

And just to ruin all your female (or homosexual) desires, (wo)men. Raiden has no junk, he’s asexual. For all we know he can have girl parts.

Oh, wait, he has neither:

So stop drawing pictures of him with exaggerated genitalia, please?

Sadly, we have to wait until the summer. Still, very nice.

Can I get a “FUCK YEAH” from my non-existent audience?

The short gist is, this is a wide-screen tailored online-code-base-like-Super Street 2: Turbo HD Remix (not sure if want on that front, esp. for the PS3 version. It’s not bad, though), and is based on the Dreamcast version (nearly Arcade perfect AND HAD ONLINE THROUGH 56K/BROADBAND ON THE JAPANESE COPY FOR SEGA.NET)

Also, for the PS3 users:

This Thursday, April 30, PlayStation Network users will enjoy a free, exclusive MVC2 demo! No need to purchase another game, just download it straight to your PS3 and get ready for some triple tag team action (A big thank you goes out to Rommel Hernandez who helped make this exclusive demo possible).

Here are the details of the demo:

* Two-player local matches
* Six available characters – Ryu, Chun-Li, Strider, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Wolverine
* Seven selectable environments
* Upscaled 1080p graphics
* Widescreen or 4:3 aspect ratio
* Two graphic filter options for character sprites
* And other cool options to check out

While it isn’t online, it should whet your appetite for taking people for a ride.

Annoyment: Hey Treyach, 007 mode? Pin-point accuracy from the enemies? Yeah, that’s not “hard” that’s “annoying”

“Oh, hey. I’ll slowly or too fast aim at the enemies head.” (BLAM BLAM BLAM! DUN-DUN-DUN-DAH-DUN-DUN! *Bond theme and death*)

Another annoyment: Left Bumper for weapon switch, really Treyarch? Do it Halo style and put it on Y-button for the 360 or something.

I will say that while it takes some liberties from the two Craig films (this is noticeable from the start if you watched Casino Royal to ending and the start of Quantum of Solace) I am enjoying the game otherwise (which is funny since I couldn’t stand most other Bond FPS, with the exception of Goldeneye and I didn’t touch that much since I had no N64).

I dig the SHOW THEM ONLINE! (Achievement/Trophies) are named after the Bond films (well, most of them), which is a fitting theme. As is the kill/damage system. Take too much damage and you have the “Bond gunshot through lens” effect on yourself. Irony.

The game also does a stylized opening after the first level, while it isn’t one of the big-budget movie intro-title-sequences it is refreshing to see one in a game.

A quick peek at the multiplayer menus seems to have a mixture of CoD4/5′s custom “class”/loadouts and Counter-Strikes money-for-kills-to-buy-new-guns system. I didn’t get into the multiplayer yet, but some people are complaining about it. Who knows.

Pretty good $10 spent on the sale at Best Buy. Bonus: The SKU that is $10 includes an XL 007 T-shirt. SCORE!

Also: For those that are curious about the title of this post:

< sek> Oh, hell. What the fuck were they thinking when they allowed two handguns but one primary weapon? I can keep my SMG or switch to this shotgun. But I can’t give up my default pistol to have both. That’s stupid.
<+DoctahTime> it is james bond
<+DoctahTime> he isn’t a 10-guns-in-his-backpack guy
< sek> I still find it odd that Bond wouldn’t pack of an SMG and Shotgun.
<+DoctahTime> when has he ever carrried more than one or two guns, one of which is always a pistol, in a movie
< sek> DoctahTime: Just now, two handguns and a primary.
<+DoctahTime> yeah
<+DoctahTime> that is what i mean
<+DoctahTime> two handguns isn’t much
< Etch-a-Sketch> it’s hard to seduce women when you’re carrying around a shotgun
< sekoku> Etch-a-Sketch: Winner.

In it’s defense, it has Escape from Butcher Bay which is fucking awesome.

For those of you that never played the PC version/XBOX IS HUEG LOLOLOLOLOLOL haters should buy the X-box 360 version (it looks cleaner/crisper which proves Starbreeze can’t port for the PS3 well) ASAP if only for Escape being bundled in.

PS3 version isn’t bad if you only have a PS3, BTW. Just pales in graphics a little to the X-box 360 version.

I totally recommend this game(s), though. They’re actually quite good for movie-based games.

Noteable:

Music Player
The endless humming noise in creator mode getting you down? Waiting around in your Pod for friends to join? Now you can browse your Playstation music collection and play some funky tunes to inspire you or keep you amused. Access the Music Player options from the settings menu.

Profile settings
We’ve added some settings to help clear through the clutter – if you hit the Start button, and go to settings, you’ll see a new Profile Settings menu, where you can choose whether or not to automatically collect community objects and photos.

The bold should cut down CONSIDERABLY on “profile full” errors if people use it and only collect GOOD community objects that they want. The photo mode isn’t needed, but with the amount of “photo booth”ing in levels, it’s a WELCOME option that I’m turning on. No, I don’t want a badly placed photo to automatically be added in my pop-it, thank you.
—

BTW: Monkey King is out today. It’s a free costume, go pick it up if you want it.

In non-LBP news: Sega is previewing Val Chron DLC that is out TODAY.

So yeah. Pretty good update for PSN this week.