Planet Puzzle League is Nintendo’s latest attempt at silently stealing your so called life, and after fiddling around with the final copy of the game, we’re pretty sure it will be a great investment for everyone who gets a chance to experience what all the fuss is about. It combines some of the best puzzle action with a clean interface, simple directions, easy to use controls, and fantastic multiplayer/online action. But what sets this title apart from other gems like Meteos and Lumines? Read on.

Facts and Features:

• Combining addictive puzzle action with simple touch-screen controls, Planet Puzzle League couldn't be easier to play. Players use the stylus to grab blocks and slide them left and right. If they match three or more blocks of the same color, the blocks will vanish. Form chains and combos to create an avalanche of blocks and rack up high scores.
  
  
• Up to four players can battle over local wireless, and two can slug it out over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The Wi-Fi Novice mode even lets newcomers learn the ropes in a stress-free environment.
  
  
• Planet Puzzle League supports full voice chat over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Once players and friends have exchanged Friend Codes, they can talk for free while they battle each other. The voice chat feature is also compatible with the Nintendo DS Headset.

Ready for Launch
Planet Puzzle League (or Panel de Pon DS in Japan) is based on the popular puzzle classic Tetris Attack (Panel de Pon in Japan). If you are not familiarized with this awesome game, then Pokemon Puzzle League is probably the game you remember since it hit when the Pokemon craze was still at full steam, and it was based on the original puzzle classic. If you know the basic premise, then you pretty much know the drill: A playing field is filled with different colored blocks, and you control a dual-space cursor that will allow you to horizontally swap their positions. When you line up three or more blocks of the same color, all three will vanish. If the blocks are too many and fill up the screen, it’s Game Over for you. But let’s say you start your game, and make a line disappear. Thanks to the power of gravity, every single block that was above the disappearing line will fall into a new place, so there will never be empty blocks a la Tetris.

This is where the fun and meat of the game comes in. If you have fast skills and know how to time the falling pieces, you can start creating a successive chain of lines, and that will automatically grant you a huge bonus in terms of points. It’s a challenging premise, even though it’s easy to understand -- but that’s the main selling point of this amazing franchise. So there you have it, that’s the basic explanation of the gameplay -- but what about this new version? What does this dual-screen planet have to offer in terms of fresh content? Let’s talk about the new modes.

Puzzle Mode is the basic mode that we’ve all come to know and love, so you know what to expect here. Endless mode is your “Let’s see how far we can get” mode, and people who are always looking to improve their high scores will find themselves right at home with this one. Time Attack is a race against the clock, and Garbage mode (one of our personal favorites) is a mode where you will have blocks of “garbage” drop on top of your playing field falling periodically -- forcing you to make them disappear and at the same time allowing you to create some of the biggest chains you will ever see in the game if you play your cards correctly.

The Clear Mode was featured in Pokemon Puzzle League, and here you get several levels with five stages each with a pre-determined line. You have to clear up the blocks until you are below that line. It’s pretty easy at first, but by the time you hit the third level, the blocks will be so high, that you will have little time to make some combos and clear the blocks out without the proper preparations. The Puzzle Mode is another mode that was featured in Pokemon Puzzle League, where you had a series of blocks that have to be removed by moving one or two pieces in the correct order. Sometimes you even have to make a series or chains to clear the entire puzzle out. It’s incredibly addicting and will have your head spinning with the latter puzzles.



Planet Puzzle league has a clean presentation.

Daily Play is a new mode that simply gives you daily objectives to complete, and keeps track of them thanks to the internal DS clock. It will incentive you to play daily (not that you will need incentive to play this addictive game), but people with limited play time will be thankful to have this little game mode reminding them to give it a shot.