Puyo Pop Fever - GameCube

Tetris is unarguably an all-time classic. It paved the way for many puzzlers to follow, and for years, other developers have been offering their own renditions - clones, even - of the magical falling block formula. And the same is true of Puyo Puyo, a traditional Japanese console puzzler, released many times over, just disguised with new names and themes. However, the real Puyo Puyo remains the best yet, and now the series has been brought up to date, releasing on GameCube courtesy of Sega Europe.

Puyo Pop Fever retains the anime style and concept of its predecessors by offering an array of colourful environments, some cheesy characters and even cheesier dialogue. It's easy to see why the Japanese love it so much, and combined with brilliant gameplay, Puyo Pop Fever will be welcomed on UK shores too.

Gameplay revolves around a similar premise to Tetris, in which pairs of multi-coloured blobs fall into a bin. Your task is to align them as they fall in order to link like-coloured blobs together. Once you have linked four of the same, they'll pop and disappear. And that's all there is to it. Of course things are made more challenging when the game steps up a pace. The better your perform, the faster the blobs will fall, leaving you less time to plan your strategy and making you vulnerable to silly mistakes.

It's a great little puzzler, and the addition of a two-player mode makes it all the more exciting. Highly recommended. more