7 Wonders of the World
Score: 75% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: MumboJumbo Developer: Hot Lava Media: UMD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: 7 Wonders of the Ancient World is a casual title that has been on the web for a while now, but how does the game fair in its romp onto the PSP? The handheld title takes on the same visuals as the downloadable game which are simple symbols on the gameboard and intricately detailed backdrops behind the board. Each of the colored stones that you will have to try to group together have a distinctive symbol as well as each stone having a particular shape. The game's soundtrack isn't all that bad, but it is pretty forgettable. The sound effects that play when you are swapping and destroying stones are effective and get the job done.
Gameplay: 7 Wonders of the Ancient World is a puzzle game much like Bejeweled or Jewel Quest. In 7 Wonders, you need to swap the places of two adjacent stones in order to form rows and/or columns of three or more like colored tiles. As stones are destroyed, the pieces fall to the bottom of the screen. This part is slightly different than the other two games mentioned because these pieces are used to help build the various Wonders (i.e. The Pyramids, Garden of Babylon, etc.). This background construction that goes on as you work your way through the level acts as a type of progress bar and by completing each of the Seven Wonders, you then unlock the next difficulty level where you have to do a little more effort in order to line up same-colored blocks. Besides the Story Mode described above, 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, there are two other gameplay modes, Free Play and Rune Quest. Free Play lets you replay any of the Wonders that you have already unlocked, except this time under a time mode that forces you to work a bit faster than before. Rune Quest is like Free Play in that you can play any of the levels you have already unlocked, but where it differs is the lack of a time limit and the need to clear only a certain type of stone. This slight change makes this mode a bit longer and tougher than any of the previous ones since you can't just work to clear just any stone.
Difficulty: Which brings us to 7 Wonders of the Ancient World's difficulty. As I said above, the hardest levels are the ones found in Rune Quest. As you would expect, the later levels in each mode are harder than the previous and Story Mode's three difficulty settings seem to be pretty accurate. So how do you make a game of this style more difficult? By messing with the shape of the gameboard. Early levels will just be simple rectangles, while later ones will have extrusions and holes that make it harder to line up tiles.
Game Mechanics: 7 Wonders of the Ancient World has a simple interface, which isn't surprising considering the game's point-and-click origins. You can use either the analog stick or the D-Pad to move the cursor over the block, then you tap (X) to select a block and finally, you move in the direction you want to swap places. 7 Wonders does a pretty good job getting translated to the PSP and since the game is now portable, you can attempt to build the various monuments while on the road or on a plane.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
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