 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Q Entertainment |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | Puzzle | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Stick Duo, Wi-Fi (Ad Hoc) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
The late Gunpei Yokoi was a man of many talents. After starting out as a common assembly line grunt for Nintendo (manufacturing Hanafuda cards at the time), his ingenuity soon caught the eye of the one and only Hiroshi Yamauchi, and Yokoi was quickly moved into product development. After developing a number of popular toys, Yokoi went on to create the acclaimed Game & Watch line, worked on a number of arcade titles, and of course developed the Game Boy (extremely successful) and the Virtual Boy (err…not so much).
The latter was of course a flop, and eventually led to Yokoi’s resignation from the company. He went on to work on development of Bandai’s Wonderswan handheld, but was tragically killed before its completion. Which brings us to Gunpey, the very first title released for the Wonderswan and named in honor of one of gaming’s greatest inventors. Almost a decade after its original release, Q? Entertainment (makers of Lumines and several other puzzlers, one of only two games we’ve given a perfect score thus far) has brought it to both the Nintendo DS and PSP (the latter I’m covering here). While certainly not a blemish to Yokoi’s name like the Virtual Boy was, it isn’t quite the success that the original Game Boy was either.
Gameplay appears to be simple at first glance, but like most good puzzle games quickly becomes more challenging. The basic goal of Gunpey is to connect line pieces across a 5x10 tile playing field, forming one long line and clearing the connected pieces. Of course, simply clearing five piece lines will only get you so far; to rack up a high score and stay in the game, you really need to pre-position pieces so that you can clear many more at once when a complete line is formed. Basically, any pieces that are connected to the main line, and closed back to it or the side of the board, at the time the line is formed will all be cleared at the same time.
Line pieces come in four varieties: two diagonal pieces and two “v” pieces (one upside down, one right side up). Unfortunately, the player’s ability to get creative is severely limited by the lack of ways a piece can be manipulated…they can only be moved up or down one panel at a time, swapping places with other pieces as needed. They cannot be dragged and dropped, nor can they be moved from side to side in any way. Being able to move pieces side to side in particular seems to naturally fit in with the game, and in fact I spent several manual-less games when I first started playing Gunpey trying to figure out exactly how to do so before finally reading the manual (which I didn’t have on me at the time). Sure enough, on page 9 it specifically states that you can’t swap pieces side to side, and the fact that the company felt the need to explicitly point that out indicates to me that it feels like something that should be a part of the game to a lot of people.
Still, the core gameplay is fun, if limited. Finding new ways to pull off long line combos is challenging, and there’s always the drive to get the highest score. Aside from that, the game’s other big motivation lies in the form of skins. Basically, new skins are rewarded in the Challenge mode based on the amount of time you last in the game. Each skin comes with an original techno song (most of which are quite good) to go along with a unique background and sound effects set, most of which are wacky themes that seem to be native to Japan-developed titles. If you last through a set number of loops of the song, you then win the skin permanently.
While most skins are interesting, the whole system is severely hampered by the fact that they always appear in the exact same order. This means that no new ones are unlocked until you’ve first replayed the ones you’ve already seen over and over again, which can mean over an hour of gameplay (or more) before you finally unlock a new skin at the higher levels. That’s not nearly enough motivation to keep going once you’ve started to tire of the somewhat simplistic gameplay, and seeing the same things over and over again only makes it less likely the game will hold your interest. A system with random skins would’ve been much better, or even allowing you to pick up where you left off by starting with the most recent one would’ve been preferable to making the player start at the bottom every time.
Aside from the Challenge mode, players can also play Single Skin (play a standard game with same skin the entire time), Double Skin, and Gunpey 10x10. In Double Skin, you jump back and forth between two different skins by using the L/R buttons. In essence you’re playing two games at once, and if you lose one you lose them both. Even with the aide of a mini playing field to the side of the active one, it’s still frantic fun that makes the game as a whole less monotonous. It’s just too bad that you can’t unlock skins in this mode. In Gunpey 10x10, the width of the playing field is doubled while the height remains the same. As you’d expect, this makes it more difficult for form a complete line, but some of the resulting combos can be spectacular. Of course, the trade-off is yet more tedious moving the cursor one panel at a time.
Bottom Line:
In an already crowded genre, Gunpey simply has too many limitations and outdated design decisions to compete despite some relatively addictive gameplay. Puzzle games (especially on handhelds) have progressed quite a bit since this was first released for the Wonderswan, and Gunpey no longer holds up like it might have then. Worth a look for puzzle fans, but it doesn’t quite live up to the legacy of the man whose name it intends to honor.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
|
| 6.0 |
Posted: 2007-01-01 09:47:29 PST