Prism: Light The Way
- November 28, 2007 00:00 AM PST
The Nintendo DS is fast becoming the system of choice for puzzle games, with games following the time-tested formula of engaging game play, quirky characters and solid multiplayer. Prism: Light The Way, luckily, solves two-thirds of that the puzzle--even if the back story should have been left in the dark.
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The premise of Prism sounds like an overly enthusiastic high school teacher trying to liven up a dull lecture on photosynthesis. Thankfully, though, you won't have much use for the story past the quick tutorial. Essentially, some inconsiderate space-monster has gobbled up all of the light particles in the universe, which spells trouble for the light-consuming Glowbos. But never fear; the friendly Bulboids are here to help, ready to shine beams of light into the mouths of hungry Glowbos everywhere.
You Have The Power
Naturally, it falls to you, the player, to facilitate this friendly exchange by using the stylus to move around objects on the screen and reflect the Bulboids' life giving rays and into the Glowbos. The tools at your disposal include mirrors, T-junctions or splitters, color filters and the eponymous prism which separates white light into red, yellow and blue spectra.
With the exception of the first ten or so simple levels, Prism packs a heavy amount of challenging and addictive game play, as the main puzzle mode sports 120 levels of increasing difficulty. The levels become exceedingly packed with more and more Glowbos to feed and not necessarily enough Bulboids to do so. Add to the mix irregularly shaped boards and obstacle blocks, and you've got some mind-bending work ahead of you. Scrutinizing the more difficult boards for other ways of reflecting light to the Glowbos does give you a mental workout, but not exasperatingly so; we honestly had fun with the game while it lasted.
Even after you master every puzzle, there's still a fair amount of replayability. There are modes featuring time attacks, an infinite stream of randomly generated puzzles, and hyper mode offers a dynamically changing level in which Glowbos will randomly appear and disappear like whack-a-moles. Aesthetically, the game looks like a dumbed-down version of Snood, with game sprites little more than smiley faces and mutifaceted cubes. The levels are plain as the purple and blue color scheme and user interface hardly change, and the game's one-track musical score did get repetitive at times, though we were often too engrossed with the puzzle to even notice.
Two's A Crowd
Multiplayer functionality was solidly implemented, but unfortunately Prism won't be much of a party pleaser when two is a crowd. Prism only offers co-op and versus multiplayer in pairs, though you can play with a friend using only one cartridge via download play. We liked that you get an inverted view of your friend's display in the top screen, which makes for some manic light beam coordination in coop mode where each player controls half the board.
We got a fair amount of play out of Prism--at times it was tough to put down--but the fact is, you won't be able to stick with it for more than a short time. The various game modes and multi-player functionality might keep veteran puzzle geeks coming back, but most of us will have grown bored of the repetitive design and moved on. The thirty dollar price point doesn't help matters either. Still, if you can snatch this one up on sale or clearance you won't be disappointed with a few hours of short-burst entertainment. --Mike Spitalieri
