February
16, 2005
Hot
Gen Studios had established themselves as a quality videogame
studio on the Gameboy Advance. I'll still insist that Kelly
Slater's Pro Surfer is, after Advance
Wars 2, the finest game
ever created for the handheld. These people knew how to make
great games, knew how to keep the players hooked, knew how to
paint graphics that glow and dance.
They
have since closed down, like so many small development houses
in Europe and America during the past few years. This fact is
even more depressing when you discover just how gifted and skilled
these people were, and how increasingly stale and risk-averse the
giant publishers have become.
Egg
Mania is an good example of this. Here is a puzzler with
enough personality and polish to elevate it above the level of
Cheap Gimmick. It's a good little game.
For
some reason, the Advance has seen very few puzzlers.
There was a long stretch in the 1990's when the original Gameboy
had nothing but puzzle games. A lot of those
titles were really good, too. What happened to them? I expected
the steady stream of puzzlers to continue into this decade, but
they've all but died out. Goodness knows, games like these can't
be expensive to produce. Excuse
me,
I'm rambling here. It happens. What
you should know about Egg Mania is that it takes the standard
Tetris game, adds a few clever twists to the formula, and still
manages to feel fresh. Here, you are given your choice of egg
charcters, each with their own unique look, who must catch the
falling pieces and form the rows.
Egg
Mania, however, is not about clearing endless rows of blocks.
The goal is to build towers so that you can escape to a waiting
balloon at the top of the playfield. You must, however, pay attention
to your structural integrity. For insance, if you were simply
to throw blocks on top of one another, eventually, the foundation
will collapse and you'll lose all the pieces. Since this is a
race to the top, you will lose precious time. Oh, and one
more thing: your pit is being filled with water. It's
a great example of solid game design. You must call upon your
Tetris skills, but you must also keep your eyes on your opponent,
who is trying to beat you to the finish. There are a number of
power-ups and bonus blocks, ranging from concrete (to fill up
holes) to faster speed, to - my favorite - bombs. I'm sure you
know what to do with those. There
are a number of gameplay modes, including a special bomb-throwing
mode where you and a friend just throw bombs at each other (it
plays like a portable Twinkle Star Sprites). Usually, the single-player
game involves a ladder progression against different eggs, playing
against any number of brightly colorful backdrops.
I
find myself enjoying this game, but I suspect this was made with
human opponents in mind. Playing the computer feels functionary
at best, because there's never really any challenge. You're just
going through the motions. Why isn't there more variety in the
computer players' strategy and technique? Why isn't this game,
well, tougher? Playing
against a friend is where the real action lies, and my suspicion
is the single-player modes are merely practice for the real action.
And on that front, it really does work. There can be some really
heated matches, especially when you're hurling bombs at one another.
If that isn't your idea of fun, then I don't know what is. |
