Puzzle glory on the DS? Look again.
User Rating: 6.5 | Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits DS
I like my puzzle games, but amazingly Tetris doesn’t cut it for me. I need a puzzle game that is a tad more addictive and challenging as play time progresses. Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits fulfills that, well at least most of that. While it does have an effective and unique approach for a puzzle game, it sadly doesn’t take advantage of the touch screens as much. What I’m trying to say is Drill Spirits could work on any console/handheld, it doesn’t seem as exclusive to Nintendo DS players. While that doesn’t seem to be the case with casual players, this game could quite cut it for you if you’re looking for an exigent puzzle game. There’s different ways to approach this game. You can hate puzzle games and pop the game cart in and keep on tapping the A button and eventually run out of air and die… Then blaming the DS for your death. Which seems to be the case for a handful of people. Then there’s the group that opens the box up and reads the instruction manual as if it was a successful life for dummies. Once they have learned the manual by heart they pop the cart in and pass through the first two levels like a breeze. I say first two levels merely because the difficulty level staggeringly increases near the beginning. I’ll admit, I’m at least halfway decent at puzzle games but Mr. Driller got me; since at progressing level isn’t technically harder, it’s just longer. When the levels are longer the game becomes much more frustrating which is quite unfortunate. The level design is simple; each 100 M is considered a “stage”. The first level is 300 M deep, which is obviously three “stages”. Then the next level is 500 M then 800 M and continues until 2000 M. The goal of the game is fairly apparent; try to get the character (not just Susumu Hori, there are unlock able characters) to drill through the X amount of meters of colored blocks. Sounds simple but is actually very tricky. There are two ways to die in Drill Spirits: run out of air, or get squished by a block. I seem to die by the block more than anything. But no puzzle game can be that simple there has to be a twist. That little twist in Mr. Driller is the use of items. Sadly, these items have to be purchased in a store. Yep, points are needed to buy these items. The points are pretty easy to get, all that is needed to do is to beat a level (or at least try beating a level), and the points will roll in… Slowly that is. The items that are in the store range from a force-field bubble to extra lives; the items are very useful. In Drill Spirits there are three single player modes: Mission Driller, Pressure Driller, and Time Attack Mode. Mission Driller is the standard play mode, just drill down and destroy he colored blocks to reach the goal. Pressure Driller is my favorite variant, in this mode, the player’s main objective is to pick up power capsules and defeat the Destroyer Drill. The Destroyer Drill continuously advances toward the player, and if it catches up him, the game will end. The character will be revived when the player loses a life because he ran out of air or was crushed by a block, but the player must be aware that he can lose valuable time! The player needs to aim fireballs at the vulnerable areas of the Destroyer Drill to slow him down. So it gets kind of crazy. The last one player game mode is Time Attack Mode that, dare I say, is self-explanatory… It’s not too great either. And yes, there is multiplayer. It requires multiple game cards, so I haven’t had any playtime in the wireless mayhem. It’s up to five players (why five? I don’t know) and the only mode that can be played is Driller Race. Which is most likely a race… to the finish. Meh. Could be fun? I wish this game were the kind of DS game that I could brag about its visuals. But hey, it’s not. Too tell the truth, it could very well run on the GBA despite the dual screens. It is an unwritten fact that puzzle games aren’t known for they’re amazing graphics. This game goes fits nicely to that rule. The sound and music isn’t too hot either. The music isn’t very good but it gets stuck in your head, whether you like it or not. The sound effects are basic and dull. The game is very uninteresting in these two departments. Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits is the best puzzle game on the DS right now (I haven’t played Zoo Keeper yet, so don’t quote me on that), which is saying… Well, nothing really, since the DS only has this game and Zoo Keeper that categorize in the puzzle genre. Puzzle fans will enjoy this game for a while, but eventually will find it boring. If you’re one of the rare Mr. Driller fans you’ll like this, it’s nice to see the series on two screens… Even though you will barely look up on the second screen. From my site thegreenplug.com
