Meteos - Better than Tetris

For those of you unaware, Meteos is a high-speed puzzle game developed by Q Entertainment, the same company that developed Lumines for the PSP.

The idea is that the galaxy is under constant threat of destruction by the evil planet Meteo. Meteo perpetually spews chunks of radioactive debris through the cosmos, called Meteos, damaging and sometimes destroying entire planets and whole civilizations along with them. However, in recent years, a defense plan was stumbled across with which these attacks could be diverted. It was discovered that by causing the collision of three or more of the same-colored Meteos, the asteroids would hurl themselves back into space and out of harm's way.

So, the idea is that you play the role of a planetary defense agent commissioned with the task of cauing the collision and subsequent removal of deadly Meteos hurling toward your planet.

The way that the game actually plays out is like so: a constant stream of colored Meteos fall from the top of the screen and begin stacking on the bottom. Once a block lands, you can move them vertically within the column they are stacked in, but not horizontally. The idea is to stack either three or more blocks of the same color on top of each other vertically, or to line three or more next to one-another horizonally. Once you do, the coordinated blocks will launch into the air, off of the screen and into space, taking any blocks with them tht might have been stacked on top of them.

The neat thing is the level of strategy that must be utilized in order to clear out large amounts of blocks. A surefire way to get Meteos out of your hair immediately is to stack same-colored blocks vertically. They'll rocket into the air carrying any other blocks on top of them without a hitch. However, the trade off is that you're only getting rid of a fraction of the total number of blocks that you have to deal with. Stacking them horizontally is substantially riskier, but it pays off a lot more. Going with horizontal matches will launch several columns worth of blocks into the air, however, because of all the extra weight, you need to stack several lines of horizontally-matching blocks under one another in order to get the thrust necessary to knock them all out of the area.

The game is just nuts, and I haven't even played against CPU opponents or human competitors yet. In multiplayer, apparently when you remove Meteos from your screen, you can actually fire them into your opponent's screen and make their life a living hell by bombarding them with too many blocks. I'd really like to try the multiplayer out, but I need to find someone else with a DS before I can do so. None of my friends in Salt Lake are handheld-nerds, so it's a bit tough to find an opponent.