Shoe: Grab a stylus and get rubbin’—you need to destroy the space rocks that are raining down on your planet in this innovative (yet familiar) puzzle game. You know the deal: find three blocks of the same color and connect them. Simple, but when you match those blocks, it launches all the ones above them into the air. From there, you can combo more blocks inside the floating mass, throw individual rocks up to the mass to keep it afloat and give you more combo options, or let that mass drop back down to match up with other pieces on the planet surface. Puzzle-game vets will need a bit of time to adjust to this radical new style of play, but all these choices, as well as the different planets with different physics and gravity strengths, mean Meteos can accommodate almost any playing style, from hardcore combo fans to casual players who don’t want to think about anything beyond those first three blocks.

If you like that combo business, however, and can wait out the slow burn it’ll take before everything clicks, you’ll find a deep, addictive experience on par with Tetris Attack (Super Nintendo) or Lumines (PSP). Find three friends to play with (you can play a limited four-player game with one cart), and you’ll never want to put your DS down again.

Shane: It’s time to put Lumines into cold storage—Meteos deftly snags the portable puzzler crown for the new handheld generation. While not quite as stylish as its PSP cousin (the audiovisual experience here isn’t so much “sexed-up rave culture,” it’s more “fourth-grader’s science fair project”), it’s actually a better game.

Meteos doesn’t succeed through simplicity—instead, it pummels you with so many distinct ways to approach scoring (horizontal matches, vertical matches, midair combos, step jumps, and midair docks) that it’s easy to create your own unique style. It’s fantastically deep, immediately addictive, and supremely fun—especially in versus mode. And don’t listen to naysayers who claim you can win by simply scribbling...they’re wrong.

1UP.COM—Che: Just as Lumines’ audiovisual overload was a perfect fit for the PSP, Meteos’ innovative stylus control and dual-screen action is a seamless match for the DS. But unlike Lumines, Meteos is fast and unforgiving—like a fighting game you’d play for minutes at a time. In the cosmic free-for-all of wireless multiplayer, think of the planets you unlock in single player as characters, each with its own fighting style; some allow you ample time to build up combos at the risk of being slower, while others are wicked fast but can’t dish out huge attacks. Quirky and addictive, Meteos is the killer app that the DS desperately needs right now.

Planets for Sale

Just what we need...more reasons to be addicted. After each match, you earn as currency all the different Meteos (the name for those little blocks) that you blasted back into space. Fuse them together to buy new planets, special power-ups, or rare Meteos that’ll let you purchase even more rare planets and power-ups.

Eventually, you’ll open up ultra-low- or ultra-high-gravity worlds, blocks that pulse and wiggle, and more. Not only does the game have a crapload of goodies to unlock, but because you actually have 12 different types of Meteos, you have to be strategic about what you earn and how you spend them.

Good: Supports many play styles and techniques

Bad: Small blocks may be hard to touch for some

That’s What She Said: A longer, thicker stylus feels better

The verdicts (out of 10)

Shoe: 9.0

Shane: 9.0

Che: 9.0

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Q Entertainment/

Bandai

Players: 1 (2-4 via local Wi-Fi)

ESRB: Everyone

www.nintendo.com

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.