At first glance, Meteos might appear to be similar to other puzzle games like Columns or Puyo Pop. Playing the game, however, quickly extinguishes those thoughts as you frantically use the touch screen to avoid planetary annihilation from the falling Meteos. Although the game can be played with the d-pad and buttons, if ever there was a game that shows off the touch screen, Meteos is it. Different colored Meteos rain down from the sky and hit the ground. The objective is to line of three similar colored Meteos, which will ignite them and send them back into space. The tiles can only be moved vertically in the columns. Lining up three of the same color in one vertical column will send those Meteos, and the ones resting on top of them, up into the sky. To get more pieces launched at once it’s sometimes best to line up at least three horizontally toward the bottom of the screen. Depending on the planet you’re playing on, the gravity will differ. Most of the time if there are many pieces on top of the pieces blasting off they’ll slow down in the air and begin to fall back to earth. To prevent this you’ll have to act quickly and try to match up three more pieces within those blasted off pieces to create another ignition. This will usually send the pieces off the screen. To make things even more difficult, Meteos are constantly dropping from the top of the screen and they can land on your ignited pieces, preventing them from leaving the planet’s atmosphere. Constant care must be taken to keep on matching up the colors to try and get them to launch up and off the screen.

While Lumines was a slower paced puzzle game, Meteos is very fast and hardcore. Newcomers to the game will no doubt feel overwhelmed by the fast action and may feel confused even a few hours into the experience. Practicing the various levels and modes is vital to understanding the full potential of the game. There are many options when playing Meteos. There is support for up to four players where it can be all-for-one or teams. The goal is to send as many Meteos as possible to your opponents’ screens to make them lose. Special power-ups can be used to help you win the battle. Most matches are over pretty quickly due to the fast pace of the game. The game features 1 card network play for up to 4 players or if you want you can assign the CPU to take over the job. In addition, there are other modes of play that will keep players busy for a very long time.

The game keeps track of all sorts of statistics as you play. Every Meteo you launch off the screen is stored in a bank where you can use them to unlock new planets, weapons, songs, and more. This keeps the game fresh as it seems like new things are always waiting to be unlocked. The graphics fit the game nicely, but it’s the music that is very impressive. Each planet has its own background music and all of it sounds great. Some of the music reminded me of the original Star Fox on the SNES, which is a good thing since that soundtrack was awesome.

If you’re into puzzle games, Meteos is a fantastic piece of software destined to stay in your Nintendo DS for a long time to come. There is a bit of a learning curve to the game and it seems like matches are over excruciatingly fast when compared to games like Lumines or Tetris where you can go on for 30 minutes easy. It’s not too often we get a fresh take on the puzzle genre, but Meteos fills the void nicely and is another great addition to the growing Nintendo DS library.