Joseph Luster
November 8, 2007 Puzzle Fighter was kind of a surprise back when it came out on Playstation in 1997. Surely the spirit of Street Fighter couldn’t be siphoned from its fighting game trappings and transported into a cutesy head-to-head puzzle game, right? Yeah, tell that to a sixteen year-old me as he screamed at his television, his friends, and anyone else in earshot.
Whereas the majority of puzzle games are all about staying alive and keeping the screen clear of pesky blocks, Puzzle Fighter is not as friendly as its super-deformed cast would lead you to believe. This one has always been about making your friends yell out in agony, shaking their fist at their cruel fate and possibly physically assaulting you in some way. Even playing against the computer can inspire rage at higher difficulties, but that’s half the fun, to be honest!
But if you fear for your life whenever you’re near a fellow competitor, then the Xbox Live Arcade HD Remix of this block battle classic is the perfect solution. Now sporting the ability to take your fights online and all over the world, it’s never been safer to completely obliterate your best friend with a ridiculously huge chain of attacks, no longer fearing the ensuing violence.
Here’s the setup if for some reason you’ve never had the opportunity to tackle this one. Choosing from a pint-sized cast of fan-favorite fighters from Capcom series like Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, you take on other challengers by forming same-colored gems on your side into large chunks of crystalline cruelty. Once you deem your block big enough, you can use another crystal to shatter it, sending blocks over to your opponent that are fitted with timers and a color pattern unique to the character you’ve chosen. Fill their side up to the top and it’s curtains for your rival. It’s slightly harder to describe succinctly on paper than it is to just sit down and dig into, but it’s a very simple concept that, like all great games, takes time to master.
Once you do master it, though, you’ll find that the matches become faster and more vicious than ever. Victory often comes down to a skin-of-your-teeth type situation and, depending on how strong your ties are, could lead to shattered households and broken bonds of friendship. Especially insulting, for example, is taking a joke character like Dan, gifted with a really bad attack pattern that favors the other player, and completely obliterating the competition.
You’ll find a lot of that on Xbox, and it’s as tough as you would expect a veritable rogue’s gallery of puzzle pros to be. The game runs pretty smoothly over the magical Internet, too, making this the ideal version of the game. As for the HD makeover, it’s hit or miss. The animated fighters that occupy the center of the screen don’t really look much different than their PSone counterparts, while the gems themselves are in startling high definition. That hardly matters once you’re in the heat of battle, and the only people that should even be paying attention to the animations are members of the cheering sidelines.
If you’re a fan, this is a no-brainer. At 800 points (about $10), it’s certainly a nice deal, and added modes remix and rebalance the game entirely. Even if you just fancy yourself a competitive puzzler in general it’s worth the dip, just try not to scream too many obscenities into your headset once that top-ranked bruiser takes you out for the 100th time.
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
System: Xbox 360
Available: Now
Rating: E
