Meteos: Disney Magic Review

In the follow-up to one of the best puzzle games on DS, Q Entertainment decided to take their tried and true gameplay mechanic and blend it with Disney characters to create a new experience for Meteos fans. With plenty of replay value and Disney charm, the folks at Q Entertainment are aiming to expand the Meteos audience by combining the addictive gameplay with the Disney universe.

Meteos: Disney Magic plays out like a bedtime story, complete with requiring the player to hold the DS sideways, like a book. While this feels odd at first, you quickly get used to the new orientation. The top screen (or left one when you hold the DS sideways) doesn’t serve any real purpose other than having basic animations that act out the story as you clear the board, so you focus on the lower touch pad as you launch colored blocks off into space. It’s entertaining, and somewhat distracting, to look at both screens at the same time, but thankfully you only have to focus on the main game screen while playing.

For those of you who’ve never played Meteos, allow me to write up a quick summary. For those who’ve played the original, skip on over to the next paragraph to learn about the gameplay changes in the Disney Magic version. Meteos looks similar to Tetris, in that you have blocks falling from the top of the screen towards the bottom. In Meteos the tiles fall individually, however, and you have to match three or four of the same types of tiles to have them blast off into the sky and clear the screen. You can match tiles continuously, creating combos that help launch the tiles completely off the screen. You move the tiles together using the stylus, by dragging them towards similar tiles to create an explosion. Like any classic puzzler, there’s plenty of depth, as you can move tiles around and plan for large combinations that clear the entire screen and give you a ton of points.

The biggest gameplay change in this version of Meteos is the ability to move tiles left and right, as opposed to the original where you can only move tiles vertically. In general, this new gameplay mechanic serves to make the game easier than the original, which is expected, with the Disney license and all. Don’t be fooled, though, the higher difficulty modes still provide plenty of challenge for Meteos veterans. On some boards, like the one for Nightmare Before Christmas, the tiles do not fly off into space, but instead just explode and turn gray. Only by matching enough of them in a row do you get them to disappear from the screen. This makes those types of boards much more difficult than standard ones, and in my opinion, a total pain to play. It does, however, ratchet up the difficulty quite a bit for those players looking for a challenge. Progression is pretty linear on easy and standard modes, but opens up considerably in the harder difficulty modes, since the game allows you to pick from a series of boards to play next, much like the original. There’s also a score-based Challenge Mode and a Vs. CPU Mode to test your skills. Overall, fans of the original will find the same addictive gameplay here, with some interesting twists that make the experience sufficiently fresh.

Like the original Meteos, Meteos: Disney Magic is filled with colorful tiles and tons of on-screen effects and explosion animations. The different Disney themes, ranging from Lion King to Pirates of the Caribbean, offer a very diverse palette of tiles to choose from, though not as many as one would’ve hoped, and it would’ve been great to include all the original boards in this sequel too, just for kicks. Another area where the original game shone was in the audio department, and Meteos: Disney Magic definitely delivers some great tracks, for the most part. What you get is a mix of classical Disney tunes, remixed, to the point where some of them are just vaguely recognizable with the Disney properties they represent. Aside from some duds, like the Toy Story track, the sound in this game holds up well when measured against the original. As usual, the best way to listen to the audio in this game is through the use of headphones, as the sound seems quite muted coming from the DS speakers.

Meteos: Disney Magic is billed as the sequel to Meteos, and plenty has changed to really qualify it as a legitimate sequel. The game feels a lot like the original, but with the new horizontal tile movement and tile behaviors, there’s enough fresh content here for fans of the original. Unfortunately, the most requested feature on the original, online play, is a no show. You’re once again limited to local wireless play, and it feels like a HUGE missed opportunity for developer Q Entertainment. Overall, this is a great title for Disney fans and fans of the original Meteos. The easier modes work well for younger gamers (who have a short story mode but can access the various boards you unlock in challenge mode), while Meteos veterans will enjoy the significant challenge offered up by the more difficult expert mode. You can breeze through the different modes in short order for every mode besides expert, but like any great puzzler, Disney: Meteos Magic offers tons of replay value that will keep you launching tiles for a long, long time.