When the company formerly known as Buena Vista Games announced Meteos: Disney Magic last April, I freely admit I wasn't quite sure what to think. The original Meteos has long held a special place in my heart, and I wasn't sure what exactly they were aiming to do with it. Now that I've had my time with the title, it all makes sense.
Meteos is a game that can really only be done on the DS. The notion is that single blocks of various types are falling into the playfield well, and the player must use his stylus to slide them around, arranging them into rows or columns of three-to-five of the same type to make them fire, incinerating them into faceless black bricks and launching them and any blocks atop them into the air. Here, physics comes into play: your matches only provide you with a certain amount of thrust, and if you don't have enough thrust, the blocks will fall right back down again. (Different boards that you play on will have different physics to them, giving you a slightly different challenge in each one.)
To solve this problem, you have a couple of strategies at your disposal. First, if you continue to make matches before the incinerated blocks revert to normal blocks, you'll combo up—increasing both your score and the power of your thrusts. Second, you don't have even have to wait for the blocks to settle before making more matches; you can grab them and slide them around in mid-air, if you're fast enough. Expert players can "juggle" large stacks like this for quite a long time, and it's very satisfying.
Disney Magic, advertised as a sequel, does do a few things to change up the core gameplay. The first change you'll notice is that the orientation of the system itself has changed: you'll hold your system book-style a la Brain Age instead of in the traditional touch-screen-on-the-bottom orientation espoused by the original game. I cannot sing the praises for this decision enough. The blocks are immeasurably easier to hit correctly with the stylus, and the increased pen travel makes moving them feel better.
Also changed, and perhaps a more contentious point, is the addition of the ability to slide the blocks side-to-side as well as up and down. I confess I'm a little torn on this one; it does serve to make the game less challenging, but at the same time, I can't say it's not fun. Ultimately I think it's a net positive; it eases the pressure a bit, changing the core game from one of "frantically search for a match, any match" to "rearrange blocks to make the most of the matches you can make". (Purists can, with some effort, unlock the original behavior in the game's Expert mode.)
The special items found in the original have also been reworked: Disney Magic substitutes a much smaller set of special item blocks—definitely for the better, as the tiny blocks were sometimes difficult to identify correctly in the original—and the addition of a special power meter. The meter is charged as you play and once fully charged can be used at any time, and helps you along with an effect like slowing down the playfield motion or giving your matches extra firepower. The addition is actually a pretty good one, offering you the option of extra help to meet a story mode challenge or blowing through, guns blazing, to go for the bonus points you get for ignoring it.
The Disney themery is where I start to break with my praise for this game. While it's certainly far less offensive and almost borderline ignorable than a lot of other licensed titles I've played, it doesn't feel quite right. To their credit, Q (developers of both the original Meteos and this title) has made almost all of it skippable. You don't have to sit through the banter between Jiminy Cricket and Tinkerbell if you don't want to, and that's a good thing, because it's rather inane at times. I'm left wondering if even young audiences, who the theme is obstensibly targeted at, would appreciate it.
A worse offense than the visual and story theming is the sound and music. I hesitate to pick much at it because it's not all that close to the low end of the rather wide gamut that DS game music runs, but the bland renditions of Disney themes and the sound effects that don't fit them very well end up creating an aural experience I'd rather just leave turned down low rather than break out the headphones to experience fully. The worst offense here is that I know Q can do better.
It seems to me that what Meteos: Disney Magic is trying to achieve is twofold: tweak the game a little to make it more accessible to newcomers, and hitch its wagon to the Disney license to get them to take a look in the first place. While doing so, it managed to stay relevant to the type of person who would have been hooked on the original Meteos in the first place. Whether that sort of person should buy the title or not depends on what they're looking for. If they want a challenge, they should probably leave it on the shelf. But if they're looking for a slightly different experience, perhaps minus the audiovisual experience of the first title but with the added bonus of a longer-lasting, more zen-like way to play, then Meteos: Disney Magic may just be something worth looking at.
Meteos is a game that can really only be done on the DS. The notion is that single blocks of various types are falling into the playfield well, and the player must use his stylus to slide them around, arranging them into rows or columns of three-to-five of the same type to make them fire, incinerating them into faceless black bricks and launching them and any blocks atop them into the air. Here, physics comes into play: your matches only provide you with a certain amount of thrust, and if you don't have enough thrust, the blocks will fall right back down again. (Different boards that you play on will have different physics to them, giving you a slightly different challenge in each one.)
To solve this problem, you have a couple of strategies at your disposal. First, if you continue to make matches before the incinerated blocks revert to normal blocks, you'll combo up—increasing both your score and the power of your thrusts. Second, you don't have even have to wait for the blocks to settle before making more matches; you can grab them and slide them around in mid-air, if you're fast enough. Expert players can "juggle" large stacks like this for quite a long time, and it's very satisfying.
If I ate a big jar of honey before bed, I'd have nightmares too.
Disney Magic, advertised as a sequel, does do a few things to change up the core gameplay. The first change you'll notice is that the orientation of the system itself has changed: you'll hold your system book-style a la Brain Age instead of in the traditional touch-screen-on-the-bottom orientation espoused by the original game. I cannot sing the praises for this decision enough. The blocks are immeasurably easier to hit correctly with the stylus, and the increased pen travel makes moving them feel better.
Also changed, and perhaps a more contentious point, is the addition of the ability to slide the blocks side-to-side as well as up and down. I confess I'm a little torn on this one; it does serve to make the game less challenging, but at the same time, I can't say it's not fun. Ultimately I think it's a net positive; it eases the pressure a bit, changing the core game from one of "frantically search for a match, any match" to "rearrange blocks to make the most of the matches you can make". (Purists can, with some effort, unlock the original behavior in the game's Expert mode.)
The special items found in the original have also been reworked: Disney Magic substitutes a much smaller set of special item blocks—definitely for the better, as the tiny blocks were sometimes difficult to identify correctly in the original—and the addition of a special power meter. The meter is charged as you play and once fully charged can be used at any time, and helps you along with an effect like slowing down the playfield motion or giving your matches extra firepower. The addition is actually a pretty good one, offering you the option of extra help to meet a story mode challenge or blowing through, guns blazing, to go for the bonus points you get for ignoring it.
It's always better down where it's wetter.
The Disney themery is where I start to break with my praise for this game. While it's certainly far less offensive and almost borderline ignorable than a lot of other licensed titles I've played, it doesn't feel quite right. To their credit, Q (developers of both the original Meteos and this title) has made almost all of it skippable. You don't have to sit through the banter between Jiminy Cricket and Tinkerbell if you don't want to, and that's a good thing, because it's rather inane at times. I'm left wondering if even young audiences, who the theme is obstensibly targeted at, would appreciate it.
A worse offense than the visual and story theming is the sound and music. I hesitate to pick much at it because it's not all that close to the low end of the rather wide gamut that DS game music runs, but the bland renditions of Disney themes and the sound effects that don't fit them very well end up creating an aural experience I'd rather just leave turned down low rather than break out the headphones to experience fully. The worst offense here is that I know Q can do better.
It seems to me that what Meteos: Disney Magic is trying to achieve is twofold: tweak the game a little to make it more accessible to newcomers, and hitch its wagon to the Disney license to get them to take a look in the first place. While doing so, it managed to stay relevant to the type of person who would have been hooked on the original Meteos in the first place. Whether that sort of person should buy the title or not depends on what they're looking for. If they want a challenge, they should probably leave it on the shelf. But if they're looking for a slightly different experience, perhaps minus the audiovisual experience of the first title but with the added bonus of a longer-lasting, more zen-like way to play, then Meteos: Disney Magic may just be something worth looking at.