Puzzle Chronicles (XBLA)

These kind of puzzle games can keep me rooted for hours. Even when I can’t get past a level, any game involving shifting blocks about is sure to keep me playing on and on until I have finished. It’s just that addictive quality that nobody can explain.

Puzzle Chronicles is, in fact, a sequel. There was the quite popular Puzzle Quest and the space-y Puzzle Quest Galactrix. The original Puzzle Quest had a gameplay style much like the Bejeweled game on Facebook, which also takes up a lot of my procrastinating time, so I was quite excited to review the latest installment.

In the Single Player story mode, you can name your character and you have the option to embark upon a slightly slow paced tutorial. Everything is explained well, though, and you can skip this stage. Your character is a rather beefy looking warrior, freed from captivity by a sorceress. The cutscenes are cheesy, to the extent of being rather funny, but if you don’t care about the story and would rather get straight to the puzzles, these are skippable too.

The gameplay is different to the original Puzzle Quest. While the style of travelling back and forth and encountering monsters along the way is still in the game, the actual game itself has undergone a major change. It is more of a sideways Tetris style game, with you and a foe battling for space on the board. There are power ups to help you succeed, and certain coloured gems will charge these. You can also find ‘mounts’, animals that you train up in minigames (these are like Tetris too, only the right way up, and timed), and you can charge up attacks for them as well. There are shops, which sell weapons and armor. These basically add up to the advantage you have in your games.

One thing I have to say is a bit dodgy are the difficulty spikes. I was playing on Normal, and the monsters I encountered were something like: Easy Slaver, Easy Robber, Super Hard Troll!, then another Easy Slaver, then a Super Hard Snake! It makes for some frustrating battles but you don’t get any penalties for losing and you can try as many times as you like.

There is also a Quick Game mode, where you have a quick match against the enemies that you meet from the story. It is just the same as the story battles, and great if you just want a basic game without the sidequests and such. The Multiplayer is basically the same as Quick Game mode, and it is good, if not long winded. Matches can take anywhere up to 10 minutes to finish sometimes, because they are a little on the slow paced side.