04.07.07
Puzzle Quest DS
We finally got a Wii a few days back, and no, didn’t have to pay an extortionate amount for that. The first day of playing brought forth muscle ache the next day – must be the unusual ways in which you have to move that controller sometimes. Still, when Elebits comes out, I’ll be waiting with controller in hand, ache or no ache.
Along with the Wii, my betrothed got me Puzzle Quest for the DS. Here’s some screenshots for people who don’t know what it is. It’s fairly simple: you solve puzzles to defeat bosses, forge items, research your mount, research spells, and capture creatures. Pretty addictive, to the point that my character is now a level 26 after about 2 solid days of playing. It’s not often that I find games that are good enough to keep me playing so continuously.
But… and there is a ‘but’, as with any game that has been rushed out onto any platform, and worldwide at that, there are some bugs you may encounter during gameplay. No other reviews online seem to mention any of these, so maybe people haven’t played enough of it to discover them, but they have managed to annoy me a wee bit too much.
1) Screen scrolls interminably downwards… to stop in the middle of a sea on map section. It happens most often when I’ve been playing it for a couple of hours, and if I try to scroll back up, it just rolls back down again. So reset time. After reset, you may notice that the last few matches may not have been saved, and you do end up doing it all again (frustrating if it was one hell of a battle).
2) Someone reviewed that dialogues have glitches, as in it doesn’t show properly occasionally. I haven’t had a problem with that, but during the battles, I’ve had what was supposed to be ‘4 of a kind’ or ‘5 of a kind’ come up in some weird blurred out incomprehensible yellow glyphs. Again, reset does help, but save point might be a bit boggled.
As they seem to happen every few hours, it hasn’t improved my temperament of late. So, if you’re the type of gamer who gets irritated at the mere mention of a ‘bug’, this game’s not for you. On the other hand, you’re used to ‘bugs’ and like playing puzzles of the Zookeeper or Bejeweled type, this game is a must for you – you won’t have a life for a while after this though :p