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Review
Mr. Driller Drill Spirits Review
Posted: January 17, 2008 - 9:28 am by Scott
Now I'm not the type of person that would go out of my way to pick up a puzzle game, I honestly can say that puzzle games tend to bore me. But before I bought my DS, a friend of mine and I were hanging out in Gameworks, which is a huge arcade, and in the corner was this arcade machine "Mr. Driller". My friend started up a game of it and I watched him play for a while. After he lost his last continue, I decided to try my hand at it. The game was great, it wasn't totally like a puzzle game, and it was more like an action game. To cut an already long story short, "Mr. Driller" fascinated me. So when I bought my DS, I was able to get my hands on the DS version of "Mr. Driller" and I was addicted to it for weeks.
Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits is a cute little game in which you control a "Driller", who's goal it is to reach a predetermined depth of any given level, by drilling through a multitude of colored blocks. These depths start out at 300M (I have to assume that the M is equal to meters and not miles, since this is a Japanese game after all), and go up, or should I say down from there, all the way down to 2000M. There are 6 levels in the mission mode, each with a different goal depth, and as you complete the mission mode various new drillers become available. Drilling is not a total walk in the park either, you'll have to contend with a dwindling air supply and blocks falling from above you that didn't get cleared. Each of the unlockable drillers have different skills, for example the starting driller, Susumu is a well balanced character with no outstanding skills, while Holinger-Z is a robot driller that can have blocks land on top of him once and he wont die. This skill basically doubles the amount of lives you have, since it can be used once per life. There are also drillers with improved drilling speeds and a dog driller that can jump up two blocks high instead of the normal one block height. The graphics in MDDS are crisp and vibrant; it has a some what cartoon-like feel to it. Each part of a level is separated in 100M sections, and each section's blocks are slightly different from the last section. The colored blocks usually start as a solid color (Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow) and from there you'll see varying color patterns on the blocks, from swirls to checkered patterns. The action of MDDS is all on the touch screen, but as you go deeper and deeper into a given level, you'll see the blocks you passed on the top screen, which sort of helps you choose the best course of action. This is because, say, you have to move left or right, but if you go left you'll break a big section of blocks away and you'll see that, the ones above you will come crashing down. But if you go right, you'll only break a few and the rest of the pile will still be stable, which do you choose? Obviously left is not a good choice, heh. As you progress through the depths of each level, you will notice that the music changes. Each section's music is an upbeat fun little tune that seems to keep the pace with the action. I love the little sounds in this game too, everything from the different character's "whoa"'s when they narrowly dodge a falling block, to the sounds of the blocks evaporating as they are connected in sets of four. Everything fits so well in the sound department of this game. The only thing that can get annoying is the emergency meter going off if your air supply gets too low, but once that happens you'll be frantically trying to find an air capsule, which mean that the warning sound actually is doing its job. Although MDDS is a NDS game, it really doesn't make much use of the touch screen. I mean, yeah you can use the touch screen to navigate the menus and such, you can even play the actual game with the stylus. The fact is that the game controls ten times better if you use the D-pad and any of the buttons on the console, this is basically a 2 button game (D-pad + a button). Which, isn't all that bad, I mean tetris used to have me playing it all the time back on the Gameboy, and that was a two button game. So all in all, even if the game doesn't utilize the touch screen as part of its best control scheme, the game plays great with the D-Pad and buttons. The multiplayer modes alone are enough to justify a good amount of replay value. Each match of multiplayer can go from 100M to 1000M and during each race, there are power-ups and such that either help you along or hinder your opponent. And each race is usually cut-throat (at least the ones between me and my friend were). These driller races are especially fun, and I don't know how many times it's been neck and neck until the very end. Other than the driller races, the normal mode also give you a few options, there is the mission mode, which you can try over and over to get the high score with each driller on each level. There is pressure driller, which has you racing against a giant machine called a Destroyer Drill, and your goal is to destroy the Destroyer Drill (ironic huh?). And then there is the standard Time Attack Mode, which means you are racing against your own best times to see how fast you can clear a stage. 
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August 28th, 2008
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