Meteos: Disney Magic
Meteos, 2005\'s enigmatic inter-galactical versus puzzle game, has just been given the Disney treatment. For many cynics, this is analogous to having your pet project sent to the pound and getting neutered. Oh, the horror! Developer Q Entertainment must be quietly weeping inside. The easy presumption could not be further from the truth, for the only tears Q Entertainment is shedding are those of joy. Theirs is a rags to riches story, and Meteos, the videogame equivalent of Mia Thermopolis in Disney\'s The Princess Diaries. Where once there stood a frizzy-haired frump - the original Meteos - sophisticated enough to be noticed only by a handful of hardcore puzzle fans, there now stands a radiant princess, essentially the same game but manicured, mannered, and destined for commercial success.
Contrary to popular belief, no amount of creative juices has been stifled. In fact, the formula has been refined and recalibrated for enhanced playability, beginning withthe way you hold your DS - sideways - and extending to how the Disney properties are applied. Brief scenes from movies such as Toy Story and Lilo And Stitch have been etched in to provide context for various stage goals. Fundamentally, this endeavour does not affect gameplay. But stringing together blocks of the same color gets that much more exciting when Captain Jack Sparrow\'s (Pirates of the Caribbean) life is on the line. Fans of the first game will be disappointed to know that online play, a big factor in reigning puzzle games Tetris DS\' longevity, is once again out of the picture. As to whether the exclusion of online was a conscious design decision to prevent kids - the primary demographic - from falling prey to child predators, we can only speculate. The only concrete conclusion we can make here is that, for a licensed game, Disney Magic is surprisingly solid.
