The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, way back when, as you may recall, I bought a whole bunch of games on the cheap side from a Best Buy sale. What amazes me about said sale is that the one game I bought completely on a whim, Neopets Puzzle Adventure, is the one I’ve been playing the most. Sorry, other, probably better games!

The concept of the game is a simple one. “Hey, that Puzzle Quest was popular. Let’s take that and put Neopets in it to make it MOAR POPULAR!” It’s a recipe for success, honestly. I haven’t played Neopets in years, but from what I remember, it, as a franchise, is totally about little games like this anyway, and weird little plots. I am also of the camp that believes that, if you’re going to try to make a licensed game on the cheap, you might as well completely rip off a good game, so the game comes off fun. So I was all for this idea. In execution, there are many flaws in the game, but it’s so damn fun I find it really easy to overlook.

First off, I was unhappy I was unable to make an Aisha for my character. What Neopet you are has ABSOLUTELY no bearing on the game, but that’s the Neopet I had back in the day, and I even have an Aisha doll in my room. So I was kind of disappointed. The game does have an awesomely bad random name generator, though, which I enjoyed. My character ended up being named something like Aiirepyaa. A good random name generator is so much fun. I will forever thank Wizard 101 for giving me the name Rachel Sparklewhisper, for example.
Once you make some character, there’s some plot about getting a ship ready and then there’s some amulet summoning meteor monsters or something. It’s all pretty pointless, much like the Puzzle Quest plot. Still, again if memory serves, it seems pretty true to plots in Neopets, so I could see fans enjoying it muchly.

The game itself is a modification of Reversi or Othello. The rules are exactly from that game, and if you know how to play it well, you will win. There is an element of randomness, in that if you flip a whole bunch of pieces, you create a “shockwave” that flips over a random piece and can trigger others flipping, but this random element seems to always be in the player’s favor. I didn’t see any complete bullshit of the computer getting shockwaves and coming back from behind. Basically, if you don’t know how to play Reversi well, you will get totally destroyed. The first few matched I lost obscenely because I didn’t know the tricks to playing a good game, but once I figured them out, I never really lost.
The main problem and blessing of using Reversi as the base is that it’s a game that you can’t fiddle with much. In Puzzle Quest, you can have powers that drastically change the playfield because in a few turns, the playfield will be completely random again. In Reversi, changing too much completely and utterly breaks the game. The game attempts to mix it up by having different board shapes, which do help, But the powers, which come in the form of collectible PetPets you gather during the plot, are not very varied. There are only so many things you can do, and certain ones are clearly the best. Granted, anything with Stun properties were clearly the best in Puzzle Quest, but there were still other powers worth your time. Less so in this.
Additionally, leveling up does nothing to your character. Since there’s no “HP” or anything in a game of Reversi, I can’t see anything that gaining levels does for the actual gameplay. It seems to just be a method to unlock codes to get items in Neopets proper, which is probably a good incentive for someone who actually plays Neopets, but I basically felt gypped out of the feeling of progression I go to RPG elements for.

Still, I can’t deny that the game is really fun. It’s missing the “bullshit!” moments of the computer pulling out a win from its ass a la Puzzle Quest because Reversi is a game of complete knowledge, and the computer can’t screw you in that way. There’s also no denying that Reversi is just a fun game to begin with, and the perfect game to play while listening to a podcast, something that really elevates a game in my book. If the Neopets theme won’t drive you crazy and you’re jonesing for puzzle-y action, I can easily recommend this game. It might be a harder sell at the $20 it is on Steam, but at the $10 price point I got it at on DS, it was very, very worth it.