Label: Ocean
Price: £9.99
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter
Do you ever feel that some of the best games that you can remember were more frustrating than being a one-armed man hanging from a cliff with an itchy bottom? No, well you obviously must take your genital cleanliness very seriously. And so you should 'cos cleanliness is next to godliness, eh kids?
So whilst we're all taking good, clean, fun, let me introduce you to Puzznic, the very latest game to push past the big, corporate doors at Ocean. It's purely a puzzle game, whereby you must move squares around within a shape and by making blocks with identical symbols on them touch, make them curiously vanish. So where's the big frustration then, you may ask? Where's the itchy bottom and cliff-hanging analogy going to fit in? Well, it's like this. Puzznic is progressive. Very progressive. It's so progressive that it makes cross cultural marriage and positive discrimination seem dull be comparison.
Each successive level contains more puzzles and harder ones too by jingo! And the real thinking part comes in when you have large odd numbers of each type of block. Sometimes you will have to just sit and stare at a screen before you come up with a strategy and a lot of them involve manipulating blocks onto moving platforms and dropping them and then quickly moving another block before it hits the ground.
Sounds complicated? It's not, it's just good, clean, honest to goodness annoying - but what a sense of achievement when you finish a level.
Label: Hit Squad
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Steve Keen
My mum always said that everyone should have at least three square meals a day. This used to confuse me a lot 'cos brussels sprouts, potatoes and a lump of sirloin never looked very square to me. Ever since then though I've had a passion for squares, large or small and PUzznic looks set to provide me with more than I ever imagined.
Puzznic is a pure puzzle game which first cam out at a time when Ocean, already famous for their arcade hits, decided to give arcade puzzles and non-shoot 'em ups a chance. It involves moving squares around within a predetermined on screen shape and aligning ones with identical symbols to make them disappear, giving you some yummy score points.
Each successive level has more difficult puzzles to solve with different shapes and odd numbers of individual symbols to deal with. Until you get used to it this can become very frustrating as you wrack your brains trying to find a way to match them all up, but the end feeling, once you've actually completed a few levels, is most triumphant!
The graphics are clear and colourful, and it's easy, most of the time at least, to distinguish the symbols on individual squares. There's not much sound to speak of but the overall feel of the game is just as a puzzle game should be... beautiful but brain busting.
ALAN:
I'm not a fan of the puzzle genre of computer games but I must admit Puzznic does tax the old grey matter somewhat. I never spend very long with a game I genuinely don't like but this one kept me occupied or hours on end.
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