Game:

Puyo Pop Fever (2003)

Duration: 9:23

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2

So, as I had threatened some time ago, I did track down that copy of the GameCube version of Puyo Pop Fever I had located through the magic of the GameStop website "check availability" function, and as such I have a good means of playing local matches against someone in my direct vicinity.

I have actually also managed to play the PC version over Hamachi, but getting a proper connection gave my P2 such a hard time and recording process is so much more complicated and lower quality that I've been feeling rather disinclined to try it again for at least the time being...but there are several quirks that are fixed for an actual domestic release that makes me very glad to have this console version for the mere pittance I paid for it, giving me a fine two-player experience that's far more easily shared.

I once heard a rather interesting spiel as to the principle features of Puyo play versus say Panel de Pon, a game I'm far more experienced and comfortable with...and I'll attempt to paraphrase and summarize the key differences and why I naturally feel how I do about the two different games:

Puyo is a game of restraint and preparation, rather than spontaneous action. You have to work hard in the early game and set up a larger chain reaction than your opponent can and absolutely bury them in a single destructive blow. As such, the actual drops and early moves are of crucial importance, and there's actually not any room mid-match for personal improvement or practice. It's about two players throwing up the best they can muster, the sum total of all their experience and unseen training to build their visualization and construction techniques to what they are at the time the battle takes place.

Panel de Pon is about reaction, reading the stack, individually simpler patterns with greater repetition and recombination, resulting in an interesting blend of complexity and approachability. Mistakes are tolerable and even necessary chances to learn while the game marches on, because every match is a learning opportunity and growth is achieved as experience is accrued.

I can't say as I could objectively claim that one of these models is "better" or "worse" than the other...but I'm rather inclined to believe that I'm wired and trained to prefer the latter over the Puyo way of life.

Does it ever strike you that puzzle games--whether action-puzzle descendants of Tetris or more literal and idly-paced games of a puzzling nature--offer an experience abstract and metaphysical enough to ponder the more philosophical qualities of what you are doing or what you are thinking as you play? It's not like a goal-oriented game, where you're always focused on some kind of object or incentive, but rather it is the mere act of doing and thinking as you are that is both the function and purpose behind the game's design?

Well, actually, take a step back...I think what I've just described is the very definition of a puzzle...something that is meant to be pondered and worked out on a higher mental level than mere game...I just took the cerebral aspect and turned it on its side to make it a bit more Zen-like...but the fact is that thinking about games where the object is the thinking was probably bound to create that sort of train of thought within me.

My point, lost and garbled in all that gobbledygook, was originally supposed to be that even if I don't necessarily "agree" with the entirety of the "philosophy" of a puzzle game's inner nature, I'm still utterly enthralled by the fact that puzzle games do have such things and indeed impart some modicum of their unstated messages upon those who play them, and I relish the thought of the thinking that is to be provoked by any given game in the genre, particularly these. I may never be the best at or even proficient in some or all of them, but that was never really the point, I'm just glad to have been able to sample the message and take in the trance it saw fit to share with me.

Anyway, that's enough of making you listen to me wax philosophical about my half-baked notions of what a puzzle is for, if you found this video, chances are you were interested in the little falling and joining blobs, right?

Well, I think for the most part, the action tends to speak for itself, although I will draw note to the fact that I let my associate decide what manner of difficulty settings would be in use...and while I'm not sure why the popular choice for the evening was the dot below Medium, I'm equally unsure as to what the actual functional difference is between it and Medium proper...because Hard is where the fifth Puyo color is introduced. It must a speed increase that's not initially apparent to my untrained eye.

My saving grace is not that I feel I have some minor edge in terms of "skill," but rather that my opponent has yet to become more familiar with the Fever Mode formations, and as such I'm less liable to be crushed as I rightly deserve for offering so many offset chances as I seem to.