While the graphics in FantaVision probably won’t bowl anyone over, they’re more than adequate for what the game is -- a fireworks ‘simulator.’ The PS2 handles particle effects wonderfully, and there are times on-screen where there’ll be a zillion explosions and it doesn’t drop a frame. The backgrounds are generally nice, if not spectacular, with cityscapes going to space stations. (Fireworks in space? Don’t ask.) The game seems to go for something of a retro-woxil look, and it pulls it off, for the most part.

The music in FantaVision ranges from the unmemorable to the irritating, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t fit the game. Some of it’s a little too cheery and overblown for my tastes, but most of the in-game music fits what’s going on well. It’s nothing that you’re going to hum, but it’s certainly serviceable. The sound effects are what you’d expect, with lots of explosions and the occasional announcer’s voice saying that you got a ‘Star!’ or, better yet, a ‘Starmine!’ Nothing amazing here, but it’s certainly not bad.

And pretty much the same thing can be said of the gameplay. While it’s fun for a while, FantaVision just doesn’t have the staying power of, say, Tetris Attack or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. It’s an enjoyable little game, but it’s also quite hard, and many people will get frustrated with it before they really click.

The object of the game is to set off as many fireworks as possible. Flares come up from the bottom of the screen, and you have a cursor which you send to the various fireworks. You can generally only group those of the same color, and there has to be three before you detonate, so careful planning is often needed. If you don’t set off a flare, you lose points in a meter along the bottom of the screen. Lose all the points, and you lose the game.

There are a few things to help you -- wild flares can match any color flare, but much more importantly, they let you ‘jump’ to another color. This ‘daisy chaining’ is integral to beating some of the later levels, not to mention getting you the highest scores. There are also items that refill your meter more than a simple explosion does, and Stars. Get enough Stars and you go to the Starmine, which is basically a point free-for-all, with flares going everywhere at insane speeds and you getting lots and lots of points.

There’s not much more to the game, however. Setting off the fireworks in the right order is an art, and it’s often impossible to predict which color you need to horde. Since having a firework selected makes it stay on the screen longer, you’ve often got to keep selecting flares until new ones come up. It’s difficult, but not impossible.

There’s a two player mode which reminded me of the old computer game Squarez Deluxe. As you beat on your opponent, your side of the screen widens, giving you more room to set off massive chains. It’s an entertaining little add-on, and something that you’ll want to play with a friend a few times, but it’s nothing that you’ll be playing for long.

Ack. I thought I was good at this sort of game, but until I spent a while playing FantaVision, I couldn’t get past the third stage. Watching the tutorials, especially the one about chaining, is a good idea, even if the narrator speaks too slow. It’s still a tough game, and one you’ll find yourself frustrated at when it seems to be throwing all the wrong flares at you. Fortunately, it’s a puzzle game, so there’s no shame in not being able to get terribly far.

The basic mechanics of the game -- selecting flares and setting them off -- are simple enough. The cursor zooms around with ease, and it’s trivial to control with the Analog Stick. Setting off long chains soon becomes second nature. But sometimes it seems that the only way to get through an area is to start swinging the cursor around like mad, selecting everything possible, and setting it off. It’s times like these that the game shows its imbalance: there’s not quite enough information to make a solid puzzle game. Although it’s not completely random, it’s dangerously close.

There are some cool, if not pointless features along with the game itself. You can replay any level that you beat, watching it from different camera angles and with different lighting and weather effects -- misty rain, for example. After beating a few levels and saving them to your card, it actually makes for a good ‘screensaver’ -- something to run on the TV so that people don’t really pay attention to it, but don’t ask to put on a TV show either.

FantaVision is a fun little game, but it doesn’t quite hit that pure addictive quality that really needs to be present in games of this type. I found myself playing it for a while, then going back to other games that I got recently. Tetris Attack, on the other hand, once kept me up for 20 hours straight. It’s a pleasant diversion, though, and probably the only puzzle title that’ll be released for a while. If you’re a fan of the genre, and you really want one for your PS2, you can’t go wrong with FantaVision. Everyone else should rent, though, and see just how much of their fancy it tickles.