It Counts as Sleep as Long as I'm Sitting in Bed, Right?

I have recently discovered the digital version of crack. To my great surprise, it is not an MMORPG. As enjoyable and soul-suckingly addictive World of Warcraft is, it has the misfortune of being bound to a PC.

When I went to my local video game store looking for a new game for my Nintendo DS, I was somewhat disappointed in their selection. They had none of the games I was looking for, and I was about to move on to a different store when a used copy of the game Puzzle Quest caught my eye. I remembered hearing good things about it, and priced at $15 I figured it was worth a shot. Little did I know multi-colored gems would soon haunt my dreams.

Puzzle Quest takes the open-ended leveling and fantasy environment of an RPG and combines it with the casual game Bejeweled, because, well, why the hell not? I would have liked to have been in that design meeting when, after ten hours or so of fruitless brainstorming, someone decided that what serious role-playing games really needed was more gem-swapping. Putting it on a portable system was the next level of genius, since the phrase "and playing Puzzle Quest" can now be accurately added to almost any activity I engage in.

It has all the basics of your usual RPG's, you create a character by picking one of four classes and a portrait to represent her, and before long you're being sent on errand duty by your dad and some queen, and things are trying to kill you. But instead of swinging your sword at said things, you play a puzzle game. You and the monster take turns swapping gems on the board, trying to create lines of three or more, and depending what kind of gems you swap different effects occur. Some gems give you money, some experience points, some just right out hurt the bastard (I always imagine those gems as my character bopping the monster over the head with the pretty glowing staff she's holding in her picture), but most of the gems give you mana of various colors. Your character comes equipped with several spells, and can learn more as she levels up, and each spell requires different amounts of mana. Once you've collected enough of the right color mana from swapping gems (and there is NEVER enough yellow mana) she can cast her spell.

Your enemies do this as well, and, frequently, do it a lot better. The game makes no excuses for the blatant cheating, and I can assure you by the time the orc is on his 5th extra turn and your health is in the single digits from all the +5 damage gems that only drop when it's convenient for him, you may start fantasizing about stabbing him in the head with your stylus. Unfortunately, I've found the stylus is much too blunt for these purposes, so you just have to suck it up.

If that were it, it probably wouldn't be too bad. True, games like Bejeweled can be very addicting over short periods of time, and the leveling mechanic would easily extend this addiction, but it would probably still get old pretty quick. But, like any good RPG, Puzzle Quest ropes you in with the side quests. You can search for runes to craft Items of Awesome Power, capture enemies in order to learn new spells from them, and capture, train and level up a staggering array of mounts. And each and every one of these tasks is accomplished through another Bejeweled-style puzzle, ensuring maximum addictiveness potency. I don't understand why the government is wasting time with marijuana when stuff like this is available on the market unrestricted. I walked into Taco Bell today and observed a line of fake yellow tulips sitting along one window, as decoration, and the first thing that came to my fevered mind was "Yellow Mana!!"

So to sum up this rather disjointed review\cry for help, I like Puzzle Quest. A lot. And if you don't mind seeing grids of colorful gems every time you close your eyes and losing sleep to the "just one more turn" mentality, I heartily recommend it. For those without a DS, the game is also available for Xbox Live and the PC through Steam, although they both probably lose something in translation due to the inability to play them at red lights (Red Mana!).