Playing A Game Planet Puzzle League NDS

What Planet Puzzle League Has:

  1. A ton of single-player modes. In addition to the classical Endless mode (play until you lose), there are several ways to play by yourself - too many to fully enumerate. Some modes are alterations of the game's goals, e.g. struggle against constantly-falling garbage, or clear a certain number of lines. You can play with time limits or until the stack fills, by yourself or against a computer opponent.
  2. Plenty of puzzles. There are four kinds of Puzzle mode, each one with 60 individual stages. Basic Puzzles mode has the obligatory turn-limit challenges, and after clearing it, the Advanced Puzzles mode opens to follow up on it. In Active Puzzles mode, blocks are already clearing when you start a stage, and the challenge is to actively move blocks with expert timing to set up killer chains. And Mission mode presents you with more esoteric challenges, from making an exact number of matches to forcing the stack to be flat.
  3. Superb multiplayer. Planet Puzzle League can be played wirelessly with up to three simultaneous opponents - only one game card required. Hell, you can even download a single-player demo of the game to your friends wirelessly. And on Nintendo WFC, you can play anyone in the world (though this mode is limited to one-on-one).
  4. Training. The puzzle mechanics are all about seeing patterns and reacting quickly, and practice is the key to becoming a better player. PPL has a Daily Play mode, in which you can play three challenges a day, and chart your progress over time. The trials are short, and not especially difficult, but they cover all the concepts you need to know (forming chains and combos for high scores, clearing large amounts of blocks quickly, and dealing with garbage). On Nintendo WFC, a special mode - Novice Battle - is open only to relatively unskilled players (once you "graduate" from this mode it becomes closed to you), and is a good training ground to play against easy opponents. And of course, there is a goodly amount of tutorial information for newcomers.
  5. Movie recording? In a Score Attack game, it is possible to record a movie of your session and watch it later, or send it to friends who can then watch it at their leisure. This is kind of a pointless feature, but, if it strikes your fancy.
  6. Control options. At first, I thought the idea of playing Panel de Pon with a stylus was outlandish. So I changed the holding style to horizontal, and used the buttons. But eventually I realized that the stylus could swap blocks faster than jamming the D-pad to move my cursor around - so I switched it back to vertical. Nevertheless, the game is full-featured for either method, and also has options to change handedness (left- or right-).
  7. Cool presentation. It may not be a next-gen graphical masterpiece, but the highly stylized techno look and feel of the game's menus and backdrops - and similarly styled accompanying music - is something I appreciate.

What Planet Puzzle League Does Not Have:

  1. A good ranking system. Yes, there are rankings for online play, at least in theory. Curiously, however, the only mode in which rankings are adjusted is Birthday Battle, and your rankings are only in respect to other players with the same birthday. Furthermore, the rankings are not "updated," but are reset every week. The idea of a real online ranking system seems very cool, and so it's a shame to see how they chose to [not] implement it.
  2. A "story" mode. Tetris Attack tasked Yoshi with the mission of saving his mind-controlled friends and defeating Bowser with the power of puzzles. Meteos has branching paths with different opponents and multiple endings. There is no such mode in Planet Puzzle League, which while not necessary, is usually a neat addition.
  3. Unlockables. Other than the Advanced Puzzles, there is nothing to unlock - no new play fields, no new modes, no new items.

The lacking points are poignant, and I think, if approached, could have made PPL leagues better and longer-lasting. But as it is, I still feel comfortable calling it the finest puzzle game on the market, with enough single player modes to keep a puzzle fan busy, and enough wireless (single card!) fun to become a staple among your friends.

Progress: Advanced Puzzle 2-1

Rating: Awesome