I’ve never been one to really embrace anime when it comes to videogames. To be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of the animation/art style itself. So while all these years I’ve done my best to avoid the likes of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and DragonBall Z, I still find it tough to completely avoid videogames that take this same approach in terms of style.
The latest example my inavility to escape is a game is a title for the Nintendo DS called: Puchi Puchi Virus. Now while it is a puzzle game at heart, it’s certainly jazzed up with the cliché anime-looking characters, cut scenes, and horrible/horribly translated dialogue of its native counterpart. This however does not make it a bad game; after all, what counts is how much entertainment a game brings to the table. (Although the horrible dialogue does have a little something to how bad of a game it is.)
I’ve played a considerable amount of puzzle games throughout my gaming "career". Matching three like colors and/or shapes never seems to get old to me and I’ve been doing it for decades. So even though Puchi Puchi Virus has foisted its anime clutches upon me, if it has some solid puzzle gameplay to offer at its core, and not just an awkward sounding name, I'll be sold.
Publisher NIS America obviously did not see much merit in changing the title that developer Keys Factory slapped on it despite the name not exactly being catchy to American gamers. When my friends would ask what I was playing and I responded, they just had puzzled looks on their faces.
While the choice of the game's name may not be "right", the choice of platform most certainly is. To me, puzzle games and the Nintendo DS just go hand and hand. Most of the DS games I have ever owned would be classified as puzzlers of some sort. Maybe I would be more accepting of the title if the story managed to pull things together, but...
The rough story behind Puchi Puchi Virus is that you, the player, are Dr. Kevin. After the town gets infected with, no, I am not making this up, "Puchirus." you must use Dr. Kevin's invention, "The Puchi Buster DS" to cure the entire town. This virus turns its victims into odd-looking creatures/monsters that have punny names, which you may find hilarious or groan-inducing (ie Cluck Norris, who happens to be a chicken) depending on your mood. Once the people are cured, you'll additionally earn monster bios with heavy doses of referential humor (seriously, a Silence of the Lambs joke in a game that looks E or E10+?) and other wacky dialogue in the cut scenes.
Despite the, erm, quirky interludes here and there of Dr. Kevin, the entire game is spent performing your treatment on patients. (The "puzzle" part of this puzzle game.) Using the tutorial to help you along at first is a great idea and it gives you a pretty good idea about the basic rules and techniques of gameplay. For those of you who are wondering what the game is like, though, I'll have to essentially repeat everything the game tells you.
Within a typical screen of various hexagon shaped cells of different colors, you are to tap three like colors so to "lock" them. As we learned in basic geometry, any three points forms a triangle, so once you tap three cells of the same color, it will shade in whatever is in underneath the area of the triangle you created by tapping. Tapping on any of the selected cells a second time will eliminate the ones you tapped, as well as get rid of the cells under the triangle's area. If you do not clear these cells (either the ones you tapped or just the generic untapped ones.) quick enough, they will turn into what could be seen as cancer cells. They will turn gray and solidify. You will be unable to select them, unless you can get them underneath a cleared triangle.
Another way for you to eradicate them is to destroy enough cells to earn a power up in the form of a pill (how suiting). Activating a pill will destroy these and other cells on your screen to help you with cluttering issues. It’s actually explaining a game like this that sounds difficult; running through the helpful tutorial makes the game seem playable and not overly complicated.
The single player game roughly follows the above "story" and allows you to select from a small group of "case files" that you can choose to perform treatment on (There are 102 case files in total). Each case will have different "symptoms" and what you will need to achieve in order to "cure" the patient. Such "treatment plans" will include obtaining a high score, performing a chain reaction, or destroying a predetermined amount of viruses. (As staff member JnK2k2 used to point out, "virii" is NOT a word.) Once you cure a group of cases, more will be added for you to choose from. Previously cured patients can be revisited and played again at anytime by looking at your "Research" tab on the main menu...but don't worry, you won't want to.
Some objectives later on in the game become quite daunting in what they expect you to complete. Completing 4 or 5 chains of 3 chain reactions is extremely difficult to achieve but it is what's required to move on at times. This only makes the game frustrating, especially when you may have a handful of patients that all require similar courses of treatment. It feels intensely tired and repetitive after playing through several dozen cases. (On top of that, if the fancy winged logo indicates that this is supposed to be a title aimed at NIS' younger/causal fans, how do you expect THEM to be able to plow through this?)
But in a cluttered DS library of what I think are stellar puzzle games, is Puchi Puchi Virus even worth your time? It's hard to argue that it isn't, given its unique approach to the puzzle genre. While it's certainly not your run-of-the-mill puzzle game, it also will not be replacing the likes of Tetris DS in your collection. I found myself in love with the concept of the game, but after completing more than half of the case files, I found myself bored with repeatedly destroying the Puchirus. It was a combination of getting tired of seeing the same screen repeatedly that each case takes place on, and the ridiculously increasing difficulty. I found myself in the beginning of the game beating the first 20 or 30 cases without a second thought, but some of the requirements to beat the latter cases were in my opinion, a tall order.
Multiplayer is also featured in Puchi Puchi Virus and I was happy to see that only a single cartridge was required to link up with a friend (sorry kids, no Nintendo WiFi capabilities). I played a few games of multiplayer with my wife and it was a nice diversion for a few rounds, but it did not add much to the replay value in this title. This is one of those games where if you’ve seen one screenshot, you’ve seen them all. This means that gameplay does not vary too much; the initial shine this game gives off quickly dulls.
In the graphics department, Puchi Puchi Virus simply gets the job done without winning any beauty contests. You won't see me speaking ill of the graphics simply because if there's any genre where graphics matter least, it's probably puzzle games. PPV dons graphics that are at times full of vibrant color, but the 95% of the time you are at the operating table, graphics are the last thing you'll be noticing.
The audio is probably just as unremarkable as the graphics in this title. While they get the job done, you will most likely do what I do by turning the sound down on virtually all handheld games. However, the sound and music did not strike me as annoying; a common problem with many of my DS titles.
Puzzle games are a rare breed when it comes to replay value, it seems. On one hand, you'll have titles like Tetris that hold their own decades after their inception, then on the other I can think of a game like Puchi Puchi Virus that loses its luster fairly quickly. Unfortunately the multiplayer will not hold you over that much longer after you're done playing the single player game. I personally did not see much desire to go back and play previously won cases and multiplayer is all really a matter of having willing friends to challenge.
I suspect that Puchi Puchi Virus will not make too big a splash here in America, but it would be wrong to outright dismiss it as an unworthy title. I feel that PPV is worth a try for those who consider themselves fans of the puzzle genre and claim to have played it all. The lack of replayability and dearth of gameplay variety is most certainly this game's real disease. PPV plays like a one-trick pony in terms of gameplay, leaving more desired in the terms of game evolution besides arbitrarily making the objectives extremely difficult. With that said, PPV will not give you any undesired side effects unless you're an ardent hater of puzzle games; beware of purchase though.
