Gameplay Today - Because You're Always Gaming

The Puzzle Bobble series, also known as Bust-A-Move, has been around since the dawn of gaming, or so it seems. Almost every platform has received at least one game in the incredibly addictive, simple puzzle series, and with the arrival of the N-Gage, Nokia have ensured that its portable games console is no exception.

The Puzzle Bobble premise is simple: gamers must shoot colored balls from the bottom of the screen to the top, lining up three colored balls or more to make the balls disappear. If other balls are attached to the bottom of a three-ball combination, they'll also fall. The objective is to clear your screen of balls until your opponent messes up and can't keep the balls from filling his or her screen.

With such a simple, timeless premise, you might think that an N-Gage port would be simple, but apparently not. Almost everything that made the Puzzle Bobble series fun has effectively been broken in the N-Gage's Puzzle Bobble VS, making it a game that you'd do well to steer clear of when you pick up your N-Gage.

The problems with the game start with its graphics and end with its pacing. The graphics are dull and muddy at the best of times, and the N-Gage screen isn't optimized, so the balls are extremely tiny. In a game all about shooting colored balls next to one another, the difficulty distinguishing between colors spells disaster.

You'll spend a good deal of time in Puzzle Bobble VS sharing your screen with an opponent. This means that, on the already small N-Gage screen, you'll literally have to squint to see what's going on. Already, this problem makes Puzzle Bobble VS nearly unplayable. The second problem concerns the speed of the game. For some reason, the N-Gage version has been slowed down to a trickle compared to previous games in the series. Presumably, this was to allow for the fact that it's nearly impossible to see what you're doing, but it really detracts from the game, because the Puzzle Bobble series has always been about playing as fast as you can think.

There is some merit to Puzzle Bobble VS in its multiplayer mode, but unfortunately, the game play doesn't improve at all. It's nice to see the inclusion of wireless Bluetooth multiplayer, but ultimately you'll just end up sharing the frustration.

Puzzle Bobble VS's presentation is pretty ordinary; its graphics are muddy and lack vibrancy, and if it weren't for a few beeps and bops here and there, you'd be forgiven for thinking the developers forgot to include any sound. Strangely enough, there are some good 3D animation sequences included in Puzzle Bobble VS, but these only serve as a reminder that the rest of the game looks terrible.

If you're shopping for a puzzle game for your N-Gage, you'd be best to hold out, because Puzzle Bobble VS is a disaster from start to finish.