Yosumin! Live

Square Enix, still feeling the need to make it up to us all for Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant, have come to the Arcade once more following on from Crystal Defenders with a more traditional (at least in terms of looks) puzzle game. Yosumin! Live is a colourful match-the-blocks game with a twist, and now it’s made it out of Japan it’s time for us to grab a controller and jump in to the game.

As I said, on face value, Yosumin! looks just like any other match-the-blocks kind of game. If you’ve played any game from this genre it will take you a couple of minutes to get a feel for this one – but once you’re in, there’s no looking back.

Instead of matching a series of blocks to make them disappear, you’re tasked with finding matching corners of a square (or rectangle) which you then highlight to make the Yosumin within disappear. These squares can be any size – a simple 2×2 up to a full grid can be wiped out if the corners are all the same Yosumin.

There are two modes to the game: Endless and Battle. In Endless mode you’re provided with a series of challenges to complete by matching the Yosumin. Each challenge is against the clock and asks you collect a set number of various coloured Yosumin. This is done, purely and simply, by finding the corners of your sqaure or rectangle and dragging out the shape. Yosumin collected. If you’re (very) quick with your shape-making you can rack up chains which lead to bigger scores, but it can be hard to move fast enough to keep the chain going, and you have to think a few moves ahead if you want to play like that – a tricky task when the board is constantly updating with new Yosumin filling the void left by those you’ve collected.

The Battle Mode is, as you may have guessed, a versus mode against the AI (or another real-life human if you’re so inclined) and sees you picking one Yosumin as your character. In this mode each Yosumin has a specific special power which, as in all good battle modes, you can unleash when you’ve built up the power for it (by matching Yosumin). These powers vary from ones that slow or freeze your opponents cursor to ones which manipulate your opponent’s,or your own, time bar – effectively the life gauge of the battle. You can, and will, lose a round even though you have scored significantly more than your opponent. It’s all about making them run out of time first – good sized shapes drop a weight on the opposing time bar reducing it in length.

If you decide to take Yosumin! Live on, erm, Live then be warned. I only gave up playing because the whole of Xbox Live died on it’s arse that day. It is ridiculously addictive.

Speaking of addictive. The music. This music will bury itself into your head and you will randomly find yourself humming it while doing more mundane tasks like making coffee or washing up. It’s insane. In the league table of music from Arcade games that gets in your head this one’s right up there with Peggle.