Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Rent it first"

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is set up to what many American gamers see as something similar to Tetris. But in actuality this was the very first westernized version of Puyo Puyo, a popular Japanese puzzle game (that was actually inspired by Tetris and Dr. Mario). It was of course released like this in the United States to appeal to fans of the Sonic series and the popular Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. The premise is that Dr. Robotnik is planning to take over the planet Mobius by turning all of the bean residents into badniks, ensuring no fun and no music. This is actually one of the few games that doesn't introduce Sonic as part of the story.

The addicting and fun gameplay of Puyo Puyo remains in tact here. There are two screens (one for the first player and the other for the CPU or second player). Beans will fall down two at a time in random colors. Here you must align the beans into certain positions to get four of the same colored beans together to get rid of them. You must do this before your beans reach the top of your screen. Keep in mind that if your opponent works faster or destroys bigger chains of beans than it is going to drop refugee beans. These beans can only be destroyed by aligning a row and destroying it, thus destroying any refugee beans surrounding it. Thankfully you can also do this to your opponent. Depending on how good you or your opponent is will determine how many refugee beans will drop.

Like Tetris, as you keep playing the more difficult the game gets. The beans will drop much faster, making it hard for one to put the beans in desired positions. In the Story Mode the difficulty spikes as soon as you get up to the third opponent. The AI will drop their beans in more strategic places setting off bigger chains causing you to reach the top of the screen very quickly. One could get frustrated really easily from this and it can become too hard to finish. But luckily not only is the gameplay very addicting but if you don't feel like playing the scenario mode there is always the Exercise Mode where you can play on your own or you can play with a friend in 2-Player mode, which is the most recommended.

The game has a simple and charming graphical style reminiscent of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. The characters look exactly as they did in "Adventures" and look colorful. The characters and beans manage to have some personality in them. The music is also rather catchy as well.

To sum things up:

PROS:
-Charming "Adventures" style
-Catchy music
-Addicting gameplay
-2-Player mode

CONS:
-Difficulty spike very early on in Story Mode

If you are able to get passed the difficulty of Story Mode and you are a fan of puzzle games like Puyo Puyo, than this is still recommended. Exercise Mode and 2-Player Mode are great alternatives the the Story Mode and they certain to guarantee addictive and fun gameplay.