G33k!

The blocks would appear everywhere: a spare crack, an unfilled spot at the corner of my eye, somewhere I was least expecting. When I let my mind wander the shapes began to fall. I’d see a reverse L, a long bar, a cube – all of which filled gaps and disappeared. Hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep, yes, but like many people out there, I had an addiction to Tetris.

Then it was D&D. I started playing when I was nine and soon graph-paper dungeons and loose-leaf paper characters littered my floor and shelves in makeshift piles. The transition to games like Legend of Zelda and the Final Fantasy series later on was beyond obvious.

It is for these reasons that I’m forced to come forward and declare that if you can relate to the above anecdotes, you need to STAY AWAY from Puzzle Quest.

Puzzle Quest (from Infinite Interactive for the PSP, DS and soon PC) is the ultimate melding of two very potent forms of video crack. Not content to be just an RPG where you travel across the kingdom towards your ultimate goal of vanquishing an evil sorcerer-god, it is engineered so that all combat in the game is handled with Tetris-like crystal puzzles. Your choice of character class at the beginning of the game provides you with unique spells that affect your matches and increase in power as you advance in level. Also, killing monsters by winning puzzle matches wins you gold. With it you can new equipment, which gives you different abilities to use in puzzle matches, until you are the supreme badass who can make rows of crystals disappear at will.

On top of this, the gameplay is smooth, the plot is compelling, the puzzles are challenging (but not impossible), it’s suitable for pretty much all ages, there are multi-player options and the overall replay value is high. So, please, in the name of God, if you have anything approaching an addictive personality, stay the hell away from this game.

I know it’s satisfying when you level up and realize that you’re finally strong enough to lay siege to one of the innumerable cities around the game world – I know it is – but you have to be strong and deny yourself this one. It’s just not worth it, spending all of your work or school breaks hunched over your handheld. It’s not worth trying to explain to your significant other why you’re ignoring them yet shouting “FUCK YOU, MINOTAUR.” And it’s not worth losing a few weeks of your life trying to save a continent from ancient evil by manipulating tiny crystals better than everyone else. I’m lying of course. It’s totally, totally worth it. If your S.O. leaves you, that’s just more time to play. Go buy it now. I’ll see you in a few weeks at Puzzleholics Anonymous.

NEWS:

- A new twist has emerged in the ongoing war to determine whether Blu-ray or HD-DVD will reign supreme as the next-gen format that nobody cares about. Blockbuster Video has announced that come July it will carry Blu-ray exclusively in its stores. The decision was made following a six-month test in 250 stores, which determined that Blu-ray was chosen by customers over 70 per cent of the time. I hate to be the one to point this out, but 70 per cent of 10 customers is still only seven.

- Physicists at Fermilab have discovered a particle, dubbed the Cascade B, composed of quarks from all three quark families. Non-nerds may commence shaking their heads in slow bemusement, pausing to wonder how quantum physics affects them at all on a personal level; nerds can start yelling “FERMILAB! FUCK YEAH!”

- As Canada chugs along with 24 per cent broadband internet penetration, Australia has made claims that it will be up to 99 per cent within two years. Now, putting aside what an amazing feat on Australia’s part this is, I want you to consider the other, darker subtext to this story: three-quarters of internet users in Canada are still using dial-up. No, seriously, what the fuck?

JUST RELEASED:

If you don’t have enough arty black and white movies in your life, this is your lucky week: say hello to the DVD releases of La Jetee (the short film that 12 Monkeys was based on and released by Criterion, no less), and Maya Deren’s classic film on Haitian voodoo culture, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. If chicken blood makes you a little squeamish, but you still want your gore, be sure to pick up the Aliens and Aliens Vs. Predator comic omnibuses from Dark Horse and their hundreds of pages of xenomorph carnage. Also sure to class up any discriminating bookshelf are the over-sized hardcover edition of Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Stardust and Silverfish, the new original graphic novel from Stray Bullet’s David Lapham. In case you felt like waving at zombies to make them die, Resident Evil 4 has just dropped for the Wii. Oh, and finally, THE FREAKIN’ iPHONE! Beg, borrow or steal to get your hands on one of these, then haxx0r it to work on the Rogers network so you can be the coolest gadget freak in Canada.