Wetrix

Summary

Genre: Puzzle
Number of players: 1-2
Rumble Pak: No
Controller Pak: Yes
Expansion Pak: Not used

Review

Wetrix is a puzzle game with a difference. In a similar vein to that classic puzzle game Tetris, in Wetrix a number of pieces drop from the sky onto your playing field, and it's your job to move them around so they land where you want to. However, that's where the similarites end...


Gameplay: Wetrix takes a totally new premise, and that is that it's your job not to stop the landscape rising up and hitting the top of the screen, but rather that you carefully place your pieces to form a series of reservoirs into which you direct the water bubbles which fall from the sky. To do this, you must use the red 'upper' pieces to raise sections of the landscape; the green 'downer' pieces to flatten parts of the playing field; fireballs, which evaporate the water in a lake and raise your score; and bombs, which blow a hole in the landscape in a most devastating fashion. A few other features crop up also, such as the ice cube, which instantly freezes the water in a lake and requires defrosting by a fireball or just waiting until it thaws; and the mines, which sit in a lake and explode if you are foolish enough to direct a fireball into their lake.

There's quite a lot to contend with, therefore, and the game is far from easy. For one thing, a few minutes after the game starts, rain begins to fall from the sky, and if you haven't built a wall all the way around the landscape you can expect a lot of the rain to wash off the sides. Any water which does escape over the edge of the playing field, or through a hole left by a bomb or mine, is collected in the 'drain', a test-tube-like vessel at the side of the screen. If the drain becomes totally full, it's game over. Evaporating water using a fireball reduces the amount of water in the drain, providing a lot of tension as the drain gets ever fuller and you become desperate that the next piece you'll get will be a fireball.

Racking up a top score requires full use of the game's multiplier features. Firstly, for every lake you have, your score will be multiplied accordingly whenever you evaporate a lake or fill in a bomb hole, so making just a single giant lake is unlikely to get you many points. When you have collected enough water on the landscape, a rainbow will appear, and this multiplies any scores you get by ten times. Finally, every lake you make that's deep enough will acquire a rubber ducky floating on top, which doubles your score for each duck. So having eight lakes, each with a duck, and also getting a rainbow, will result in each score being multiplied by 20,480!

The game is fun to play, and can be very addictive, although it's perhaps not as easy to get straight into as other puzzle games. For instance, building up a landscape from scratch can take a little while, and a game can indeed go on for a long time. Because, by their very nature, puzzle games can be highly repetitive, occasionally a half-hour game can get rather tiresome, although the game tries to combat this by introducing more and more features as the speed level increases. Creating a perfect and high-scoring landscape can be highly rewarding, though, and it's very nice to start getting huge scores. However, even then you have to beware, since if your landscape gets too heavy, an earthquake will occur and bring just about everything crashing down around you. This can be truly heart-rending when you've spent the last 45 minutes building it up...

All-in-all, though, Wetrix can be loads of fun to play, but you have to give it time to get into it, and you have to be prepared to spend quite a while on each game.


Challenge: As mentioned, Wetrix can be a very challenging game. Your attention to detail has to be intense if you're to create a good landscape, and when the speed gets really fast it can be awfully tough to get the pieces where you want them before they land. A single mistake can often be enough to end the game, which can be harsh, but, again, is pretty much standard for puzzle games.

There are a number of modes to try, ranging from the standard 'Classic' mode, to the much-tougher 'Pro' mode; a 'Challenge' mode, where you get a time limit, a piece limit, or other restrictions imposed on your play; a 'Handicap' mode, where every time you level up a condition is imposed, such as having all your water frozen, or holes appearing at random in the landscape; and also a 'Practice' mode where you can, well, practise. Basically, there's loads of things to do, although all the modes do revolve around exactly the same gameplay. Nonetheless, getting top scores in all these modes is really difficult, and will keep you going for ages.


Graphics: For a puzzle game, the graphics are really quite good, with realistic and solid-looking landscapes; the backgrounds are more standard fare, with various odd designs. One feature of particular note is the impressive effects on the water itself, with ripples, waves, splashes and all sorts of other effects coming into play exactly as you'd expect real water to behave. Very nice!


Sounds: The game's sound is rather average, too, with the sort of bland background music that you typically expect from puzzlers; sound effects are alright, with crashes, splashes and explosions abounding, plus occasional commentary from a man with too much testosterone. Woo hoo.


Multiplayer: The multiplayer mode is a little disappointing. First of all, the necessary division of the screen into two parts makes the game highly unwieldy to play, and it's hard to see what's going on. This is a big problem due to the intricate nature of the game, and a real shame. Also, the game tends to be over rather quickly, due to the fact that you can't get rid of any water in the drains. There are four 'attack' moves that can be pulled off against your opponent by accumulating enough points, but they don't generally have that much influence on the gameplay, and it's really down to who can stay alive longest. A far better idea would have been two players working together on one playing field, each controlling a series of pieces to build up a joint landscape. But that's not in the game. So there.


Summing up: A pretty good puzzle game, with lots of innovation and very tough to do well in. Multiplayer is fairly poor, but better than nothing, and overall it's not a bad game for puzzle fans to own. Other people should probably steer clear.


Gamesmark: 78%


Reviewer: Maverik