AJs Pint Sized Reviews - Puzzle Quest Galactrix

Feature from AJ - Wednesday, 13 May 2009 @ 8:47am

Have you ever heard FPS people go on about how you can’t play an FPS without a mouse? Or how you can’t play an RTS without a keyboard? Or how you can’t play a flight sim without a Joystick? Well... add this to your list. You can’t play a “gem switching” game without a stylus!

I played the original Puzzle Quest on DS. It rocked my world. I’ve never been so obsessed with a game. Some people read a book before bed, I would play Puzzle Quest before bed every night. Religiously. Then it came out on Xbox Live Arcade and everyone raved about how nice it was to play on the big screen. I told myself I was just going to get the Xbox Live Arcade version of Galactrix, and skip the DS version. But the delay between the DS version release and the Xbox release had me give in to my weakness, and I bought the DS version anyway.

I have to say, I didn’t get hooked as easily as I did with the original. The game certainly has a bigger world and a lot more depth, but at the same time...it seemed to be missing a bit of the charm of the original and the ridiculously long and frequent loads and average presentation (including poor map navigation and lifeless puzzle animations) made me stop playing long before I would’ve otherwise.

When the review copy became available I threatened the rest of the AG team with death and other nasty surprises if I didn’t get to review Puzzle Quest Galactrix. In my mind, all the issues I had with the DS version would be instantly repaired by the supreme power of the Xbox 360! I was right, but the minor graphical issues and terrible loading problems were replaced with something far worse than I had imagined.

An unplayable game.......

Now, I am probably exaggerating here, and to be honest, my Xbox controller has had a tough life (although at least it hasn’t been subjected to Super Smash Bros), but I find some parts of the game completely and frustratingly unplayable with a controller. This doesn’t apply to ALL parts of the game, only the portions with a time limit...or when you’re just generally in a hurry.

Here is the problem. Puzzle Quest Galactrix uses hexagon shaped tiles. The astute among you will know that means each tile is surrounded by 6 other tiles. In a game like Hexic, you select a tile and use the A and B buttons to rotate surrounding tiles. It works well. In Puzzle Quest Galactix, you move a tile in one of 6 directions and select the destination tile. Being hexagons means that you never move a tile sideways instead you have up, down, and variations on the theme of up + left and down + left. The problem here is twofold. The first problem is that selecting a tile horizontally from the one you’re on is something of a hit and miss affair. The second more catastrophic problem is switching a tile to one of the diagonals can lead to inadvertently selecting the wrong destination...which, in many cases, can lead to death. This combined with the fact that the current “highlighted” tile is not all that “highlighted” means that, when in a hurry or just not quite paying attention, you will frequently make costly mistakes.

I played through this trauma for a while, but now I’m back to playing the DS version....with a stylus....the way it should be.