Download Games Roundup
Galaga! Dimensions! Fury! Mass! Vertex!
Puzzle Dimension
- PSN £7.99
- Previously released on PC and Mac (Steam)
Exactly one year ago, I got justifiably excited about Doctor Entertainment's delightful ball-rolling brain-melter.
Set to a sunny backdrop of chirpy chiptunes, it starts off suspiciously innocuous with the simple goal of rolling a ball around a series of pixelated, three-dimensional environments, picking sunflowers.
On the face of it, it hardly sounds like the sort of thing to make you forget to get dressed on a summer Saturday, but it's the quiet ones you have to watch.
Once it starts throwing in collapsing floor tiles, bounce pads, fiery grills and an understanding of 3D spatial visualisation, the whole thing kicks up a notch, and you're forced to figure out the one route that doesn't result in agonising death.
As if 100 levels of enormously satisfying puzzling wasn't enough, PS3 owners have the added bonus of stereoscopic 3D support to brag about. For once, the extra depth genuinely enhances the appeal.
If you missed out on one of the finest puzzle games to grace the download scene, then don't make the same mistake twice. Puzzle Dimension demands a place in your heart.
9/10
Lucha Fury
- Xbox Live Arcade - 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80)
It might be more than two decades since the glory days of the venerable side-scrolling beat-'em-up, but you can always bank on a new one washing up on the download shores like a hairy castaway. Case in point: Lucha Fury.
Punchers Impact's lumbering, Mexican-wrestling-flavoured slugfest starts as it means to go on - with minimal finesse, scores of predictable enemies and similarly brainless boss battles.
Unlike, say, the sparky Comic Jumper, there's no attempt to do anything different whatsoever. For the most part, Lucha Fury appears to be some sort of elaborate test of your boredom threshold. Despite offering up the promise of unlockable moves, progress involves little more than simply stabbing the X button and occasionally belly flopping them until everything deigns to stop bloody respawning.
Whenever you're in danger of having your progress cut short, the game comes to the rescue by placing health-restoring chickens in front of you to kick, but you'd probably rather it put you out of your misery. Midway through the game's 11 stages, there's a sense that it's content to simply ape everything that Capcom and Sega mastered years ago - but it even manages to screw that up.
The promise of four-player co-op ought to salvage something from the wreckage, but with only local play to 'enjoy', and a curious absence of drop-in/drop-out play, it's unlikely too many will want to suffer the tedium.
The net result is a relatively pretty update of the classic formula, but one that lacks the soul or spirit to make it even vaguely interesting. If you enjoy poor facsimiles of gaming's past, go right ahead. The rest of us can point and laugh.
4/10