Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. We will be going from Metroid Prime: Hunters to Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. From Tetris DS to Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses. Yes, I said Barbie.

This week I am going to be taking a look at Puzzle Quest Galactrix.

The original Puzzle Quest was a very addicting game.  Maybe I should say is, because I still play it to this day.  So when Puzzle Quest Galactrix was announced I was excited to see a new game in the series.  Then the flash demo ended up online and we all got a taste of the new game play.  Gone was the square playing field.  Gone were the days of extra turns for a mere 4-in-a-row.  Even the pieces moved into the field of play in a new fashion.  I was intrigued and looking forward to the game's release.

The game was first released on the Xbox Live Arcade.  Honestly, I was looking forward to getting the Xbox version of the game, but since it did not come out at the same time as the DS version, I went with the latter.  I made a grave error.

The core game play itself is not bad.  This is the only part of the game I don't have an issue with.  And while it takes a while to get used to the new rules, the game could be just as addicting as it's predecessor.  At least, the other versions of the game could be addictive. Unfortunately, the DS version has some serious problems.

When you start the game, you can choose from a male or female character.  That's it.  There isn't anything beyond choosing the sex of your character.  You don't get any classes to choose from, and that means you get a very generic character.  So right out of the gate things aren't looking good.

After you make your insignificant decision, you get thrust into a map just like in the first. Only this time, it's in space!  Exciting and cutting edge stuff.  From here you start your missions.  First, you have to fly over to a planet and then back to your starting place.  Then you go on patrol, flying to about 4 locations looking for space pirates.  Once you find the ship, you choose to attack it.  This is where we encounter strike number two: the loading.  Yes, from the time that you skip the pre-battle conversation with the space lizard to the time you get to start playing them head-to-head in Space Bejeweled is about 10 seconds.  The loading for a DS game should be nowhere near this length.  This isn't a disc based format people!  In this world of instant gratification we don't want to wait.

Once you get into the puzzle aspect of the game, you will notice that you only get to see most of the screen.  Instead of maybe reorganizing things to fit the DS screen better, they decided to make the playing area shift back and forth between turns to see the other players abilities.  Strike three.  To make matters worse, when you do make a move all of the new space pieces jerk their way onto the field.  It almost looks like some old school slowdown.  And much like in the first game, the opponents in this one are all overpowered and will defeat you often.  If you think that is bad though, just wait until you start hacking gates.  That is a space pain in the butt that I did not need.

They couldn't even take the time to add online multiplayer to it!  You can play local multi with someone else who owns the game, but this type of game screams out for online multiplayer.  Add in the glitchy music and the spotty touchscreen controls and that brings the strike total up to somewhere around 27.

This game looks, feels, and plays like a bad GameBoy Advance title.  If you have any other options as to which system you can get this game for, do not get the DS version.  This is not a good game. You would be better off actually getting flung into the vacuum of space.

Final Score - 3/10