Puzzle Quest: Galactrix Review
I've been playing video games for a pretty long time. Maybe even longer than
most of you have been on this little blue planet. I've seen a lot and played a
variety of games. So when something "new" comes along that claims to create a
new type of genre or successfully combine different ones that look like that
have no right being mixed together I get a bit suspicious. Puzzle Quest is such
a game that takes a bit of a RPG and slams it into a lot of a puzzle game. What
do I make of this concoction? Is it a great idea or a product of the devil?
Let's see, shall we...
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, available on the PS3, is the sequel to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords and it brings a Sci-Fi vibe instead of the original's fantasy theme. Despite being around the video game block a few times I had never run into Puzzle Quest and its hybrid style or gaming. Well, maybe hybrid is a little too strong because at its core it is a puzzle game; no way around that and it's really not an RPG despite having some of the basic dressings of one. You play the role of a ship captain that has recently graduated from the academy and you're on your first mission. It took me a little while to wrap my head around the idea of a puzzle game having a story. There was a good 30 minutes or so of confusion at the beginning before I got my groove going and started to get the hang of this RPG/Puzzle mixture.
Galactrix starts off with some cutscenes that are very RPG-ish, which threw me since I was thinking this was a puzzle game and little more. It sets up a background story of a few "mega-corporations" running the planet and mankind cruising the galaxy and being jerks. It is an interesting way to present the series of upcoming puzzles. See, much of Galactrix is played out on a board that has a bunch of differently colored tiles on it. Your goal is to switch places with two adjacent markers so that at least three of the same color line up. If you have ever played the classic puzzler Bejeweled you'll have a pretty good understanding of what I mean. The tiles are basic hexagons which means that they have six sides. This gives you a lot more options in lining up tiles, so many that it can be easy to overlook some of the choices so you really have to study the board to make sure you're not missing a big line up.
