I don't tend to dislike any of Sonic Team's releases. I enjoyed most of the Sonic games - including those on the Megadrive; I am a big fan of the repetitive yet addictive Phantasy Star Online and even Chu-Chu Rocket touched my heart on arguably the best console there ever was - the Sega Dreamcast. Puyo Pop Fever is a 2D puzzle game similar to Tetris. It doesn't show any signs of the spiky haired blue wonder but if it was anything like the highly addictive Chu-Chu rocket then I would have been very pleased.

Unfortunately it isn't. It isn't anything like. It doesn't have the beaty, party-like music, it doesn't have the beautiful modes, it isn't original and it certainly isn't fun. You're basically trying to beat the opponent next to you, making up a line of four colours, just like that old classic game Connect 4, in fact.

Every match consists of the same thing - dropping coloured blobs down a narrow screen in an attempt to eliminate one colour. And while its charm might last five minutes, once you've seen past these dated mechanics there's nothing else to do! The difference with Puyo Pop Fever to any other Puyo Pop game is that this has a fever mode. When you playing a boring round and you get enough strings of eliminations, the background flashes, the music will turn from drab to mediocre and you're in fever mode for fifteen seconds. All your blobs change and they set you up for a massive combo - your job is to look at the blobs you have been given and try to get a big combo to inconvenience the other player.

When you're doing very well, the other player is doing very badly because of the inconvenience Puyo Pops. These are see-through Puyo Pops that land on your combos-to-be and basically ruin everything. With this revolutionary feature I find it hard to make a comeback when the other person is doing well. It may be fun when you're playing an equally matched friend but when you're playing against a computer character and they're lighting the stage with their flamboyant moves, making your game fill up with inconvenience Puyo, well it just ruins it for me.

Other exciting modes consist of the same thing - let's have a look at them. Single Puyo Pop, which consists of matches against computer players, plus a very sparse tutorial that tells you absolutely nothing. Double Puyo Pop is if you want to lose your friends, due to the boring nature of this game. But you wouldn't put your friends through this, would you? And the worst mode, the nightmare of all modes - Endless Puyo Pop! Nooooooo! Any minute now, I'm hoping to wake up in a cold sweat - how could anybody play this game forever? [Maybe that's what bad reviewers will have to do when they die! Ed] I think this mode has been put in as a punishment, so prisons can use this game to bore the convicts to death as a new method of corporal punishment.

Within the Endless mode there's a mission mode, which is to be played on your own - not against any computer player or human player. The unfriendly 2D animated characters give you tasks, which add to your playtime. However, I purposely go against what they tell me to end the endless mode quicker.

Graphically… well it's appalling. It has to be said. Sonic Team has made some beautiful games with luscious graphics in Sonic Adventure and Billy Hatcher. So why resort to 16-bit colour and 16-bit graphics? Was this game originally designed for the Megadrive? Even the 2D Sonic games looked better than this and I'm not joking when I say this.

The sound will drive you mad; I've never used my mute button on my TV until this day. It sounds like Christmas music, with bells and glockenspiels. The dialogue is bare and the comments that the characters occasionally come out with are either foreign or are in English and don't make sense. I cannot get my sisters off it though and for that reason this game is a godsend; if it gets them out of my hair for an hour then I'm grateful and it keeps them off my elite games, which they always want to play.

Now, I like my sisters but they really are a pain when they come into my room and leisurely pick up my controller, insert one of my games and start playing a game without my consent! I might let them off at times but when I'm in the middle of reviewing a game it can become annoying. However, the strangest thing happened when I was playing Puyo Pop Fever - I put the controller down and paused the game to make some harsh notes about the repetitive game mechanics. My sister came in, un-paused the game and played it like it was second nature to her. She then said, "This is a great game Dex! What score are you giving this?" And so my sister's childlike perspective shone a whole new light on the game for me. I picked up another controller to play a two-player game with her and although I wasn't having much fun, she was. It was unbelievable. Obviously, I let her win… or did she beat me five times in a row without my helping her? I can't remember, that part of the experience is hazy to me. She even made a favourable comment toward the graphics and she's only eight! Assuming that she doesn't already have aspirations to become a reviewer, I'm going to take a small leap and suggest that this game might just be aimed at the kids.

Puyo Pop Fever is a real letdown, especially coming from the highly acclaimed Sonic Team. There are a number of other puzzle games out there and almost all of them are better than this [Except Bust-A-Bloc, trust me on that! Ed] This game has been released on budget but you're going to have to seriously think about it before you go and spend your pocket money. If you have a younger brother or sister though, then this might just get them out of your hair for a while and surely that's worth a tenner of anybody's money? Still, as far as us "grown-ups" are concerned, I expect a lot more from my puzzle games, especially when they come from the normally creative genius that is Sonic Team.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).