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Groovin' BlocksBy Marlon Esmeralda - 08-31-09 Print  EmailLast year, Empty Clip Studios developed a WiiWare title by the name of Groovin' Blocks. It provided a nice twist on the typical match three colors concept and mixed it with some rhythm elements. It garnered some favorable reviews and was praised for it's unique concept. Now the game has been expanded upon and released onto retail. Much of it is still the same with a few additions, but is it enough for returning players to invest in? Groovin' Blocks looks like your typical puzzle game, and plays like it too. You got blocks falling from the top and slowly coming down. Shuffle around the colors until you find a combination that suits you, and place it down. Match three colors, and they disappear. The twist is that the game is accompanied by upbeat music being played in the background. By placing the blocks down at the right beats of the song you will receive a higher score. When playing, pushing down will immediately send your set of blocks to the bottom. Pushing down along with the beats of the song will increase a score multiplier. You aren't required to get every beat down, but the more beats you make, the higher your score will be. There are also certain beats in the song, known as Superbeats, that will double your current multiplier, and nailing those is critical to receiving a high score. Being able to point out beats of a song is a good ability to have, but visual cues are shown to help out those less rhythmic. The blocks will pulsate along with the beat, and lines will move from one end to the other representing the beats as well. Missing a beat will cause your multiplier to disappear, but simply landing a block in place without the force down will keep your multiplier intact. So if you're not able to set a block down quick enough with the more upbeat tracks, you won't be penalized for safely placing down a block. Power-ups are also present in the game and will help accumulate a high score. As you obtain higher scores in songs, you will unlock more power-ups as well. You get power-ups that will increase the score of a set of blocks, or make an area of them just explode and disappear. The power-ups appear randomly on the board and only activate when matched with it's color. In order for power-ups to even work, they must be put down along with the beat. Placing a power-up block down on a mis-beat will cause it to be useless. The score is an important part of the game, since getting high scores on each song will unlock more playable songs. So there is a bit of motivation to stay in tune with the music and obtain a high score. Doing so is actually pretty fun too. It gives a fresh feel to the puzzle genre. Since it may be new to many, it was neat that all three skill levels in the game are available right away. So players of any skill level can find a suitable challenge straight away. I'll admit that I wasn't able to really pick up on the gameplay until a couple hours in, but it just made the game more fun when I was able to naturally get in tune with the beat and place blocks accordingly without much thought. Since the game lasts as long as the song, the gameplay isn't entirely endless like most traditional puzzle games. There's a good amount of songs available, with more songs being added for the retail version. The three ranges of difficulty also helps keep things going for much longer, with harder difficulties adding in new block shapes. For "Casual" you got your standard 1x3 set of blocks, and the "Experienced" difficulty will introduce the 2x2 square set of blocks. Multiplayer is also present where players can face off competitively or work together cooperatively to achieve high scores. Unfortunately no online play of any kind is present. A game like this would have really benefited from having some kind of online leaderboards or online multiplayer. More worse is that the game was expanded upon from WiiWare to retail, and failed again to include the feature. The visuals in the game got a bit of an upgrade from it's WiiWare counterpart with some added effects. Not too big of a difference though. Still, the game looks nice and colorful. Many brights lights and flashes, but they don't cause much strain on the eyes. The music is probably the highlight of the game though, which makes much sense. Featuring a soundtrack of many electronic, techno type music with catchy upbeats. You can't help but rock your head to the beat of some of these tracks. The tracks also have some special gaming tributes in them too, by including some 8-bit sounds, and C-64 inspired tracks. The original Groovin' Blocks for WiiWare is available for 800($8.00) Wii points, and the retail version has a $19.99 price tag. If you already downloaded the original WiiWare version, I don't see too much of an incentive to fork over an additional $20 to play more tracks. The experience isn't too different from what's already available, and online play is still absent. If you have yet to get in on Groovin' Blocks and its unique twist on puzzle gameplay, then you may want to consider giving the game a try. It's a low priced title that's packed with a good amount of content. Puzzle lovers will surely enjoy it. Ratings |
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