Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 – Puzzling Perfection
Switch, PS4/5, Xbox Series/One
In a year where everything is a bit shitty, the world needs a game that’s so obnoxiously happy and colourful it’s impossible to be sad while you play it. That game, fellow gamers, comes to us in the form of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (PPT2). Though it is now 2021, I refuse to budge from my perch of bitterness until I see any actual change – and as such, I will cling to bright, happy, gamified joy for as long as I can.
The sequel to the popular puzzle game Puyo Puyo Tetris, the second game in the series delivers much of the same – which I’m not complaining about. I was sorely needing a low commitment, fun puzzle game and that’s exactly what you get out of this title.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 takes two fantastic puzzle games (Puyo Puyo and Tetris, in case that wasn’t evident by the title) and smashes them together, adding a very basic yet ridiculous storyline and a wealth of awesome game modes for both solo and multiplayer play. The guts of the game is in its “Adventure Mode”, which serves to introduce players to the world, the mechanics and the characters. As you play through you learn all the basics so you can dive head-first into the other (and in my opinion, way more fun) modes of the game. It’s a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the game (or just haven’t played it in a while) but once you finish Adventure Mode (or get bored) there’s really no reason to go back to it.
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing else to do once your adventure is all wrapped up – in fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s almost like Adventure Mode is the tutorial that teaches you how to play so you can get into the fun stuff.
Though PPT2 boasts a lot of great solo game modes, my favourite thing is being able to play with friends. I gathered 3 of my friends and we went headfirst into the Multiplayer game modes – which is where the fun really started.
There are six different modes within multiplayer, and each offers its own challenges and differences. Versus Mode is the standard “beat your friends until they cry” whilst the others offer unique and fun challenges. Party Mode was a definite favourite (it offers a variety of ways to screw your friends over which was great) whereas Fusion (which combines both Puyo Puyo and Tetris mechanics on the one game board) was a mode we could definitely have done without.
As we kept playing, one thing became obvious – some of us are WAY better at this game than others. Luckily for us skill deprived people, PPT2 offers a handicap setting which makes the game harder for those that are good at it, and easier for those of us who suck. Turning this on made the game much more enjoyable, and really levelled the playing field.
Of course, I also had the opposite occur – where one of my friends said he was so good at Tetris he was definitely going to win before he lost miserably multiple times in a row. Unfortunately for him, there is no handicap setting to make you suck less at the game, only one to make other people suck more.
There might be some of you reading this thinking “But Jenn, I don’t have any friends – can I still enjoy this game?” and my answer to you, my friendless buddy, is yes! Multiplayer mode lets you play against bots if you are so inclined, but the fantastic game modes I spoke about are also available in Solo Mode.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is one of those games that’s great to pick up when you’ve got an extra half an hour and want to spend it having fun, without overloading your brain too much. I played it on the Switch, and it was awesome to curl up on the couch, escape the buckets and buckets of rain falling outside, and sink into a happy puzzler for a little while. If you’ve played the first one, this one isn’t going to offer you much of a point of difference (unless 2-dimensional storylines are your jam), but the amount of shine it brings to multiplayer gaming is definitely worth it.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch with code kindly supplied by 5 Star Games Australia
