Every now and then I fancy myself a puzzle game to break me away from the usual set of action and adventure games I play, but the one puzzle game that ends up pulling me back the most is Tetris. If you're a gamer, chances are you've probably played a Tetris game at least once. This addicting series has been pulling new fans in for over three decades without showing any signs of slowing down. With its simplicity and high entertainment value, its hard to say anything bad about it; its just that good. But what if another puzzle game franchise somehow dug its way into the Tetris series? Well you'd probably get something like Puyo Puyo Tetris, which is the game I will be reviewing in this article today.

The concept of the game is simple: Put Tetris and Puyo Puyo in the same pack and experiment on ways for the two to coexist. First off you have your standard Score Attack and Marathon game modes of the two as well as a Versus mode where you can face up to three human or CPU controlled opponents either in person or online, but you also have these special modes like Big Bang (where you quickly clear out a pre-made set of blocks or puyos in succession to take out you opponents), Party Mode (which is basically Versus but with field affecting items), Swap (where you play both games at once by swapping between the two), and my personal favorite: Fusion.

Now Fusion mode is similar to Swap in concept, but executed very differently. Instead of swapping between the two playing fields, both the tetriminos and puyos occupy the same playing space which make for some very interesting ways to make combos and chains. Now you'd think it would be difficult to make lines with the tetriminos when the puyos would be in the way, but since the puyos are goo they can be squashed by the tetriminos to make room and will reappear on top of them; this also completely removes garbage puyos from the playing field.

In addition to all of these game modes you also have Adventure mode: a wacky and humorous story scenario featuring the cast of the previous Puyo Puyo games, plus a small handful of new characters that represent the Tetris series. The story is this: The crew of the S.S. Tetra crash land on the Blue Planet that the Puyo Puyo characters call home due to a little incident involving both the puyos and the tetriminos. So in order to fix these problems, the two teams battle each other through the means of Tetris and Puyo Puyo matches. Not exactly the most compelling plot, but it gets the job done. I just think of it as a glorified training mode for the online matches.

Overall, I think this game is a fantastic addition to both franchises and a magnificent crossover to boot. Both games are extremely addicting by themselves and in fusing them made them even more so, and the story is fairly entertaining at times and the voice actors certainly sounded like they had fun with their roles (keen listeners will notice that the voice of the Dark Prince is none other than Xander Mobus, the VA for Smash 4's announcer). I really hope that The Tetris Company does more crossovers like this in the future like with Dr. Mario or Puzzle League. So until next time, I'll be seeing you.

Score