Wonderwallweb.com - Article: Gunpey DS

Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for a popular game called Tetris then puzzle games probably wouldn’t be what they are today, yes there have been many clones and it’s fair to say that for every good one there is a bad one, fortunately with Gunpey on the Nintendo DS, Atari have provided us not only with an excellent puzzle game but something a bit more unique than the usual.

The game itself is quite simple to play, basically panels rise from the bottom of the screen, from here lines pointing in various directions appear and your job is to connect the lines from left to right, once one side is linked to the other that chain is ready to disappear. If a line is in the top row when the next row is due to appear at the bottom, the game is over.

The controls themselves are quite simple, using the D-pad and buttons you can switch the position of the lines, however it is much easier to use the touch screen, just touch the line you that you want to move and drag it to the desired position.

You can choose to play Gunpey with one of two different rules, with the default break rule when you clear the panels the ones above fall down to fill the space, however with the original rules when you clear panels they are left empty and this makes for a more challenging game.

There are several different games to choose in Gunpey, however the best one is frontier, in mode this you choose a character and play through different stages in the form of a musical showdown, when you beat an opponent you then move onto the next stage and in doing this you unlock new characters, new stages for other game modes and sound sets for your Sound Box (we will talk about this later). The games are quite frantic with the fast paced techno style music and the cowboy themed colourful backgrounds (so colourful in fact that sometimes it is hard to make out what you are doing).

In some modes you are also given special moves to slow your opponent down, the best one randomly replaces all of your opponents lines with others, quite handy if he was just about to beat you really, the other special move causes the touch screen controls to stop working forcing you to use the buttons, this add’s a bit of variety to the game as you clear your way through each section.

Other modes in the game offer different challenges such as Time attack mode where you explode as many lines as you can in 30,60 or 90 seconds, you can play this in either single screen or for more of a challenge double screen mode where you play both screens at once by using the L or R Button to switch between them, you can also play the Endless game (Basically you just keep playing until the stack reaches the top) in this way.

The game also provides some extra’s which include a demo download so that you can send a demo version of the game to your friends DS although this disappears when your friend turns his DS off, a G-Note Gallery (G-Notes are unlocked during game play in all modes) where you place the G-Notes on the screen in whatever order you like to determine the onscreen characters movement, you can also make him dance by unlocking this during play in other parts of the game, there is also a Sound Box in which you can create your own original sounds although you are unable to use these in other modes.

Gunpey makes for a very addictive game, it is just as easy to pick up for an adult as it is for a child and the variety of gameplay offerred makes for good value, if you like puzzle games then you wouldnt go wrong if you chose this.