Memory Wiz
|
| Memory Wiz

A trip to Paris should be many things. It should be a romantic jaunt down the Champs-Élysées, coffee in full view of the grandeur of the Eiffel Tower, or dinner and a date on a river-boat restaurant moored on the Seine.

I'm not entirely sure it should be a quick game of Pelmanism.

Regardless, that's what Memory Wiz represents, a fusion of memory-based card games with the kind of match-three puzzlers prevalent on mobiles, all set out in a trip around the world, the first stop on the tour being the French capital. Not the most natural of fits, you might think, but there is something rather deft about Memory Wiz's mix of remembrance.

Though split into several different challenges, all of the levels are built around the same idea: turning over cards to match up the symbols underneath. Just as in every such memory game, progress relies in you turning over the cards in batches of two, remembering where set symbols are sat so you can call on them when you happen upon the same symbol somewhere else on the board.

With the symbols duplicated more than once in each stage, pairing them up is actually a fairly quick process, Memory Wiz being less a case of searching for rare matches and more a question of speed. Managing to string together combos earns a higher points tally and often pops up by chance, the limited number of symbols on offer meaning you're bound to find a match or two, even if all you're doing is picking tiles at random.

What Memory Wiz does smartly is to mix in some match-three style power-ups – universal cards that can be paired with any symbol, bomb tiles that blow up all matching cards and freezers that halt the clock all adding an element of strategy to proceedings.

But it's the mix of levels themselves that most impresses. While your goal is always to find the matching tiles, the arenas you play in are subtly different, rows added to the bottom of the screen potentially cutting your playtime short by pushing the cards perilously close to the top, or a clock that charges you with clearing the board in a minute or less both introducing slightly different spins to the same formula.

Subtle shifts or not, Memory Wiz is never going to be the most enthralling title on your mobile but it does pack in a fair amount of variety for your buck. Though you could hardly describe it as a risk taker, it likewise doesn't make any mistakes either, the end result being an utterly playable if slightly forgettable memory matcher.

Memory Wiz

With a nice batch of play modes, Memory Biz is a take on Pelmanism that manages to be different enough to keep you on board, but not overly altered as to overcomplicate things. A sturdy puzzler
Score
Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.