(edited review) Polarium. This is a new puzzle game for the DS. In it, you must use your stylus to create lines. When you've made a line, you tap the end of it, and all panels that the line selects flip over. This is a simple and original idea. It's too bad the game was rushed. There are two modes in this game, excluding the tutorial and multiplayer modes. The first one is challenge mode, where blocks of black and white tiles are falling down continuously, and you have to prevent the blocks from filling up the two screens. The second mode is puzzle mode. In it, you have 100 puzzles to solve in a single line. These are mind-numbingly difficult. In order to get rid of blocks, you must make a horizontal line of either black or white blocks. This makes the entire horizontal line disapear. In challenge mode, the blocks of black and white tiles seem to be little puzzles. You'll be seeing the same blocks of tiles falling down time after time after time. The game even cheats on you. That's right, the game cheats. Some blocks of tiles require you to use the unflipable border to solve them. However, if a block of tiles is in the middle, there is no top or bottom border, only parts of the other tile blocks. So, in order to solve the middle puzzle, you have to flip over some tiles from another block of tiles, making that block of tiles take even more time to solve. Completely unfair. Theres also puzzle mode. You can try the game's 100 preset puzzles, or you can make up to 100 of your own. A good thing about the game is that you can distribute your puzzles with friends either wirelessly or with a password, which is pretty neat. That's when the game trips over onto a pile of shattered glass and bleeds to death. The challenge and Puzzle modes are the only things this game has to offer. It's a terrific idea, almost as original as Tetris, the king of all puzzle games. It also couldn't be done on any other system. But the lack of game modes is terrible. This game should have been much more, and hopefully there will be a remake on another system with more modes. Polarium has a potential that never sees the light of day.
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