Puzzle Paradise
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| Puzzle Paradise

You have to wonder sometimes whether the marketing types who come up with game names are really just baiting journalists to make creaky and queasily obvious quips when the game itself doesn't turn out to be this year's must have title.

Take Puzzle Paradise. It's just begging for a 'Trouble in paradise' or 'Holiday in hell' tagline. Like a headline hack from one of our nation's fine red top newsrags, a reviewer's hand is forever drawn to those keys, positively sweating out punning potential through their finger tips.

If you've paid any attention to the top of this review, however, you'll have noticed Puzzle Paradise hasn't offered up these opportunities. That's because it's actually rather good; and wordplay when being positive isn't as much fun but it is positively sycophantic, as any critic well-versed in snide remarks will tell you.

So, to describe the basics of Puzzle Paradise. It offers 16 puzzle games set over eight areas. While playing you unlock two games at a time by performing to a certain level in the already-unlocked ones. In each game, there are bronze, silver and gold medals to win, so while a so-so performance might see you unlocking the next area, it's likely you'll have to return to the game in order to unlock a later area.

We've seen a good deal of shoddy mini-game sets (just read our High School Musical review if you need an example) so with a relatively high number of games on offer here, our suspicions were naturally aroused. Thankfully, they're almost universally great. They may all be based on the familiar dynamics of reactions and matching games, but enough thought has been put into the design of each game to ensure that no two seem too similar, which is particularly impressive considering the déjà vu-inducing climate of identikit puzzlers we see appearing every month.

Sure, there's a certain cartoon-like familiarity to the reasonably cheery visuals, but the little flecks that separate the games from the pure genre archetypes we'd expect here more than make up for that. In one game, for example, you're making fruit kebabs using a big skewer. This complicates the standard matching puzzler format by sometimes forcing you to pick fruit that won't make a match, and there won't always be a perfectly matching piece onscreen.

To an extent, the games have a tendency to flounder once you've got to gold medal score levels, but this is more a comment on the quality of the strength of the gameplay in the games rather than anything else. Some of them, if fleshed-out with proper levels, could easily be standalone titles. Fairly miserly ones, no doubt, but still the sort of thing a less forward-looking publisher would try and charge you a fiver for.

Instead, Puzzle Paradise urges you onwards to unlock new treats. Return to a previously mastered game and you'll see that the difficulty curve stops dipping after a while, leaving you playing on with little challenge, but there's often still a hypnotic pleasure to continuing on regardless. There's also a real a thrill to unlocking new games, too, with some charmingly quirky ones to discover.

After more extended play, Puzzle Paradise reveals itself as a deceptively oddball proposition. In several respects, it resembles a quick-fire puzzle affair like Wario Ware, offering the same sense of discovery in its revealing of new games. However, it's anything but quick-fire, leaving you to play its challenges for a relatively long old time rather than blinding you with stacks of new content.

It's a tactic that really works – perhaps a little too well, even, as you're left hankering for an ounce more playability in each game. With 16 fun games on offer, though, it's an ounce we don't really have a right to demand. Wrist slaps all around, greedy gamers.

Puzzle Paradise

A superbly generous collection of games any puzzle fan will lap up
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