Neopets Puzzle Adventure (Wii) - Review by Chris

Introduction

Starting out as an internet phenomenon on the Nickelodeon website, Neopets has gathered quite a following, made up mainly of younger people who are both familiar with Nickelodeon brand and their current TV line-up. As a result, with such a large following, a move into the gaming market was inevitable and so here Capcom has picked up the licence and brought in developers Infinite Interactive to bring the game to the Wii. Yet, bringing any popular media into the gaming market, whether it is an online meme or a film, has proven to be a difficult task in all but a few cases. And this is a case of one of those titles that doesn't exactly make the jump completely unscathed.

Gameplay

The grand idea behind the game is that you create and customise your very own Neopet, choosing from a range of weird looking creatures that go from tiger-esque creatures to lizards, and then take them out on a huge adventure spanning 150 missions. It's a simple concept and one that provides a substantial amount of longevity, if you can look passed the game's flaws that will drag the experience down. With such a long single player, this is where most of the time will be spent. The gameplay takes the form of the board game Reversi, also known as Othello, where two players face off to see who can take over the majority of a squared grid and they do this by placing down markers, one at a time, in the hope of chaining together markers of their colour or in the hope of capturing some of the opponent's markers. On the surface, the gameplay does seem very simplistic but you take it to a completely different level due to the tactics that will need to be employed if you hope to beat the game. This playing style is used throughout the entirety of the single player as you move your character around a large overworld, completing all manner of simplistic fetch and grab quests for characters integral to the overall story of saving the world of Neopia.

The game tries its best to ease you into the single player as it runs you through a tutorial so that you can get to grips with the complexity of the game. And while this is definitely needed, you'll wish it had gone on for a bit longer because as soon as it's finished the game and its difficulty sky rocket and even on the first quest it'll take several attempts before you can even see yourself winning. And this is only the beginning where things are simple. After the first 2 or 3 quests, the game boards change to incorporate different power-ups that your opponent always seems to get, meaning the difficulty continues to climb steadily and you're left wondering why you should bother playing any further. The game's key market will be with the children who are familiar with the Neopets name yet with such a steep learning curve and difficulty, this game proves to be too difficult at times for adults let alone children. It's a strange way to push the single player as it is where the most time will be spent because of its longevity. It just could have done with some toning down to make it more accessible. Another barrier so to speak is that the game takes an obscenely long time to load. Even moving from one menu to another you'd think it was trying to load absolutely every component for the game when it's not needed. It just makes the experience lacklustre and drawn out and the constant churning of the Wii's disk drive will immediately start to irritate you. Outside of the main component of the game, there are a couple of extra modes for the single player where you can go up against some of the game's enemies in an Instant Action game or you can get up a custom match against a random opponent. There are also some mini-games and a multiplayer component, for two players, dropped in there for good measure.

Controls

While the actual game may not be entirely accessible for the demographic it is aimed at, the controls definitely are. You'll only be using the Wii-mote's pointer capabilities and the only button that will be used in conjunction with this is the A button which is used for selecting during menus and during the battles you will be playing in. That's it. It's refreshing to see a developer us the controller as simply as this instead of trying to force unnecessary motions on the gamer.

Graphics

The overall look of the Neopets series set out by the online site has made the leap to the Wii virtually untouched. The characters are all hand drawn and look nice and show a good degree of variation in their designs and they garner the same kind of charm and cuteness that you'd expect from playing the Pokémon titles on the handhelds. The overworld map for the main campaign is done to the same style as the characters yet the constant loading of the game makes movement around the map sluggish. It's in the battles where the game's graphics don't really stand up, but then it's hard to see where the developers could have worked their flare to make things more impressive. They just look cluttered and devoid of the same charm that the rest of the game possesses. In the end though, the game doesn't pull any punches and while everything is done to a decent standard, it's nothing that we haven't seen before, graphically, on the console.

Sound

When you can heard the game's music over the constant churning of the disc being read in the console, what you'll hear is the kind of stuff you'd expect to follow the game's style and gameplay. It's nothing that is particularly memorable or even something that you'll really take notice of because it never steps beyond the bounds of 'elevator music' to grab hold of you and entice you. The game's numerous cutscenes are all presented in text with no voiceovers and while some might see it as a drawback, I personally see it as a plus because hearing people try to impersonate the tone of a lizard speaking English would be garish.

Final comments

Those who are familiar with the brand are the ones who will get the most out of the title because that is who it is aimed at. Those who know nothing about Neopets can still pick it up and enjoy it but the steep learning curve and at times obscene difficulty are two things that really make the game unplayable. The constant loading dissipates the experience as well because the game will stop for a few seconds every couple of minutes to load something up. There is fun to be had with the 150 mission strong single player but as I've said, it is fans that will get the most out of it and even then it's pretty limited.

Pro: Hand drawn graphics are nice, lengthy single player
Con: Steep learning curve, obscene difficulty given the demographic, constantly interrupted with loading
Final score: 5.4

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