Can you see the three matchable numbers on the right? Congratulations! You've mastered the game!

Ask the average "hardcore" gamer what they think of a game like Bejeweled and you'll often get a lengthy tirade on the evils of the bestselling puzzle game and the casual gaming boom it helped spawn. These kinds of mindless, over-simplified gem-matching games represent everything that's wrong with today's game industry, the argument goes. Instead of creating a compelling universe or crafting a tight set of deep, slowly unfolding rules, these games latch onto one simple mechanic (move a gem to create three in a row of one color) and wring it for all it's worth -- which usually is about 15 minutes of interesting gameplay. At their best, these gem-matching games could be called pointless diversions. At their worst, they're pure mental masturbation: a single, nearly instinctive action, endlessly repeated, culminating in a violent explosion of sights and sounds that leaves you feeling oddly unsatisfied in the end.

I understand these arguments, and agree with large parts of them. What confuses me, then, is how these same arguments seem to fall by the wayside when hardcore gamers talk about Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords and its recent sequel Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, two games that dress up this same simple, tired gameplay with the thinnest patina of role-playing clich?s.



Don't get me wrong, I've succumbed to the seductive power of the gem-matching game before. I recently fostered an intense, month-long addiction to Bejeweled Twist, spending every free moment mesmerized by the game's effortless, autopilot gameplay and bright, colorful explosions. But Puzzle Quest: Galactrix lacks many important elements that made Bejeweled Twist so compelling, namely: an effortless interface; excellent presentation; a smooth, quickly-progressing difficulty curve; and, most importantly, a frustration-free reward system that minimizes the role of luck.

Going backwards through this list, then, let's first look at the role of luck in Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. The core of the game is the series of intergalactic dogfights where you and a computer-controlled opponent take turns matching colored gems on a shared hex-grid (there are other gem-matching mini-games as well, but these wear out their welcome even more quickly than the main battles). The gems have different abilities based on color -- some do direct damage to the opponent, some regenerate your shields, some provide power for shipboard weapons (more on those later), and some provide experience points and psi powers that are generally useless in the heat of battle.

I can almost guarantee you the computer didn't serve that extra turn.

To be fair, there is a bit of thinking involved in finding the optimal match available to you during any one turn. Scanning the board for the most lucrative match is mildly diverting, as is trying to extrapolate whether your move will lead to any cascading matches as the other gems fall to fill the gap. This analysis can get downright complicated and brain-tickling when you take into account the variable gravity, which cleverly causes gems to fall in the direction you move your gem.

The main problem is that all this analysis often matters very little to the final outcome of a turn. This is because of the random nature of the gems that fill in the gaps your matches leave behind. You can make what seems like the best move possible in a moment, destroying a dozen energy gems in a carefully planned cascade, only to see a set of damage-causing bomb gems fall in from off-screen, just in time to be matched during the opponent's turn. Conversely, you can make what seems to be a relatively pedestrian single match and watch it turn into a screen-clearing six- or seven-match cascade by a series of lucky fills from the void. What's more, the game rewards these kinds of lucky cascades (and they're almost always caused by luck) by granting increased gem power and even extra turns when they happen!

If these sorts of lucky breaks happened occasionally, it would be one thing. I could even see this kind of randomness adding some rare, unpredictable spice to what would otherwise be a dull and deterministic game. The problem is that these kinds of massive turnarounds happen all the time. I can't tell you how many close matches have hinged on the opportune appearance of a massive, 10-point bomb gem that just happens to fall into place at the right moment, or how many times a massive cascade has turned the tide of a battle through sheer, dumb luck. Even when such lucky breaks go my way, the sense of accomplishment is mitigated by the fact that I did nothing to deserve my success.

Dialogue just doesn't get better than this. No, I'm serious ... in this game, all the dialogue is this crappy.

Of course, these battles aren't just about gem-matching. Your ship has gem-powered weapons that are, theoretically, supposed to diminish the role of luck by providing other ways to damage the opponent. The main problem here is that these weapons are only as good as the gems that power them, and that gem power is overwhelmingly determined by whether you're lucky enough to get boards with the gems you need. That super-laser might be just the thing you need to finish off the opponent, but it will lay fallow if you're not lucky enough to have an available red gem match when your turn comes around. Some items provide limited ability to avoid these frustrating situations, but they don't appear until quite late in the game.

This luck isn't even a decisive factor for much of the game, as you run through fleet after fleet of underpowered scrub ships. No amount of luck can save your opponents as you mindlessly grind through the battles, partly because they are outclassed by your superior shields and weapons, and partly because the artificial intelligence often ignores the obvious best move for no apparent reason. In most RPGs, such scrub battles are short and (hopefully) relatively rare. In Galactrix, you have to waste 10 to 20 minutes at a time going through the gem-matching motions, tediously wearing down your opponents' defenses to earn a victory that was practically pre-ordained.

Of course, most RPGs break up these tedious scrub battles with a well-telegraphed boss encounter. These boss battles are balanced to be tough but manageable with a smart battle strategy. Galactrix has tougher battles too, but you'll stumble upon them with no warning and at seemingly random intervals, and your ship is routinely placed at such a disadvantage that it seems pointless to even try. The irony is, though, that trying to push through is often the optimal strategy, precisely because of luck. Why retreat and spend hours grinding through scrub battles and tedious mining missions to increase your ship's power, when you can try the same battle again and again, with no penalty, each time bolstered by the significant hope that a lucky series of bomb gems will deliver you victory? The overbearing luck factor turns these major battles into glorified slot machines more than strategic stands.

The frustrations of the underlying gameplay might be tolerable if there was a strong story to pull you through. Unfortunately, the game's paper-thin plot trots out every science-fiction clich? in the book. Check them off your list as you go: the overbearing galactic hegemony; the sassy, devil-may-care female pilot assisting the naive male protagonist; the megalomaniacal antagonist looking to "perfect" the universe by force; the bored, cynical, wisecracking robot; the alien race full of greedy, conniving deal-makers ... I could go on. Without exception, all these characters and set pieces are presented without even an ounce of believable motivation or characterization, instead serving as mere totems pointing you to the next encounter.

The interface problems are perhaps most annoying during the time-limited hacking mini-games.

The painfully bad interface only adds to the amateurish feel of the game. By this point in the Nintendo DS' life, I expect games to be able to interpret stylus taps accurately and without sizeable delay. Galactrix can't manage even this feat, often mistaking taps by a few millimeters to one side, or outright missing them for whole seconds at a time. The game isn't even forgiving of these inherent flaws, causing damage and the loss of a turn if you mistakenly fail to make a match. The experience isn't helped by frequent 10-second gaps for loading and saving before practically every meaningful action, nor by occasional freeze-ups that require a hard reset. Add in a bare-bones presentation -- complete with tiny, grainy images and stock sci-fi sound effects -- and the final result is a slapdash offering that feels like it's going to come apart at the seams at any moment.

And that's the overwhelming sense I got while struggling through Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. Here was a game that was awkwardly stitched together from a lot of popular gaming set pieces -- Matching Puzzles! Leveling! Sci-Fi Weaponry! -- but without any real care for their balance and quality, much less for how they'd all interact together. Even if there were a top-notch RPG on top, the core gem-matching gameplay here would be tough to stomach. With the mediocre RPG we actually get, the weak gem-matching shines through in all its frustratingly random glory.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.