Pipe Mania review (PSP)

So often the simple things in life are what make it fun, and to this end I have a great love for straight forward puzzle games on hand held consoles. There is nothing better for helping pass a 45 minute train journey. Needless to say that meant i was looking forward to my time spent with Pipe Mania and folks, i wasn't disappointed.

Simple and effective

The concept is so inherently simple, and we've seen it so many times before that almost anyone should be able to pick this up and feel right at home. The aim of the game is to connect up a series of pipes and stop the 'flooze' from spilling out. If time runs out, if you spill too much, if you send the pipes running headlong into each other then you loose, straight forward simple and fun.

Of course it doesn't stop there, once you've mastered the basics things start to get a little more interesting. New pipe pieces are thrown into the mix, pieces that randomly change what they are until you fix them in place, pieces that change the colour of the flooze and speed it up or slow it down, all designed to make the challenge just that little bit harder and make you think just that little bit quicker.

Trains in the pipeline

The crux of the game is the 'world mode', complete with storyline, characters and final big bad dude. Unfortunately all of which are pretty much irrelevant, the characters and storyline have little to do with the game play but thankfully don't detract form it either. Progressing through different themed zones you meet different people who present different challenges.

Zones themed around railways, toy factories etc allow for a weird and wonderful collection of different problems you need to overcome, and in time honored tradition you need to work through a set number of stages before you can progress onto the next area. Normally you can move on after 7 stages though there are more in each area. Each stage has three levels of completion, the standard Bronze, Silver, Gold style approach and it's good to see that quite often just completing it all can be a challenge, meaning that working towards and obtaining a better score does feel like a real achievement.

Retro-Classic

Older members of the audience may in fact remember that this isn't a new title, it is actually an updated version of an Amiga title from way back when, and if the desire takes you it's possible to play the original version in this release. The only real difference is a slight change in the rules, rather than getting time to correct a spill once the flooze hits and uncompleted section of pipework it's game over.

Along with the original version there are a couple of other play modes offered up, including frustratingly quick mini puzzles where a few sections of pipe are missing and must be put in place before the flooze start flowing. These are on small play boards of only a few tiles square but the time limit is so short that it can be difficult to even begin assessing what you need to do before your time is up. Dependant on your view of such things this can either be just far too frustrating or a great challenge. Two player support is available in the PSP version and nicely only requires one copy of the game (strangely this is completely lacking from the DS version).

Travel companion

For the sake of completeness it's worth mentioning that the graphics are nice, clear and crisp which is about as much as you can look for in a game of this nature. At the end of the day you are looking at a grid based game board which you slot pipe pieces onto, it's difficult to make that look especially pretty without compromising the need for simplicity. Everything is nice and chunky easy to see and understand. The control system is beautifully simple with pretty much everything controlled by one button.

There is only one downside here in that this is a formula that has been worked and reworked time and time again, and there will be hundreds if not thousands of browser based version floating around the net, but they are on the net and not on your PSP. They aren't as easily portable and there is no escaping that this is the original (well almost). At the end of the day this is exactly what it says on the tin, and in that lies the reason I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a perfect travel companion on the commute to work, and perfect for pick up and play puzzle goodness.