    Upper - These raise the land  Downer - These lower the land  Fireball - These will evaporate a lake  Ice - These will freeze a lake |
 Just when you thought the puzzle genre couldn't get any worse, along comes Wetrix, a 3D water-based puzzler that, in popular opinion, reinvents what the puzzle genre is all about. Wetrix successfully incorporates a 3D game engine, and after that, it's pure game play, with many eye pleasers to boot. Don't think this is another Tetris clone, because it's not. Developed by Zed Two, Wetrix was, in essence, an accident. Zed Two was attempting to create realistic-looking water for an entirely different game, and discovered Wetrix. The concept is simple, but after playing the game for an hour or two, you realize that the game immerses you in a world where you don't care about food, going to the bathroom, and, er, anything else, just playing more, and more, and more. The game beings with a 3D but flat playing area, and playing pieces drop from the heavens. You must position straight lines, T-shaped blocks, and hollow squares on the board so that they create a space to hold water. After a minute or so, water droplets will start to fall from above as playing pieces too, in many different shapes and sizes. Dropping these in areas you have closed in will create a 'lake', and the more lakes you can create, the more points you will get. The problems emerge when you have leaks in your dams and walls, and the water leaks out. Water that's beyond your walls can run off the edge of the playing field. A gauge on the right side of the screen shows how much water you can lose, and when it fills up you get a game over. But there is more to complicate things. As you keep adding water to the playing field, it may overflow from your walls and run off the playing field. You occasionally get a fireball, which, if used correctly, can keep this from happening. Dropping a fireball on water evaporates all of the water in that 'lake', and not only gives you points but removes some of the water from the water gauge on the screen, thus keeping you from losing the game. Basically, when it comes down to it, you want to create lakes, and then use fireballs to cause the water to evaporate. As if it isn't hard enough already, there is more to Wetrix than this. Bombs also drop, blowing a hole in the playing field where water can escape. You're best off dropping bombs far away from water, or covering them up quickly with another playing piece. 'Downers' fall as well, which look somewhat like regular playing pieces, but instead of build up the land they lower the land. This can be useful if parts of the playing field become too stacked up. An earthquake can result from this, which can devastate your carefully developed game board. In the more difficult parts of the game, ice falls, which freezes the water. A fireball will thaw the ice, or it will thaw on it's own after some period of time. It sounds quite complicated, but believe me, once you get the hang of Wetrix, you won't be able to stop. This one's addicting. There are many options and types of games to play, adding a twist to the 'classic' (normal) game, but the game play mostly stays the same for each. A two-player split-screen mode is available too, but things can get a bit cramped. I can only imagine how it would be if there was a four-player mode — yikes! The graphics are stunning. The water flows like, er, water, just how it should! The playing field and playing pieces are colorful, and exciting. The background (behind the game board) is often psychedelic, wild, and almost hypnotizing. All this and a rockin' electro-dance soundtrack. Now that's my kind of music! The sounds are nice and clear, as are the frequent voices that warn you of impending danger. The play control is a bit touchy and takes quite a bit of getting used to, but after a couple of hours of playing you'll have things under control. My main gripe has to be the difficulty of seeing the location of your playing pieces in relation to the playing field. Early in the game you can use the shadow of the playing piece to tell what area of the playing field it is above. Later in the game, however, as you get many mountainous peaks on the board, you can't tell one shadow from another when you're planning where to place your next piece. This results in doing something that you had no intention in doing, and getting you closer to that game over. With practice, this becomes less of a problem, but it never goes away entirely. I might add that this isn't necessarily a flaw of the game's design, but more a problem because of the type of game. Games that use a 3-D playing playing field like Wetrix often cause the gamer problems discerning one height from the next. I don't see how this could be fixed by the game designers in any way. Overall, this one gets my recommendation to puzzle fans. Don't pass this one off as another Tetris clone, because it's far from it. Wetrix is what's known as a "sleeper hit." I hadn't heard much about this game at all, but from what I've read, it's very popular among the puzzle fans out there. Give Wetrix a try, and don't forget to check out the Wetrix website at www.wetrix.com. |
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