Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine Review (Crossfire)
It's rough giving this game a negative rating. I love Puyo Puyo.
The problem is the game is annoying. Puyo is about getting long chains, while this game encourages quickly getting 1 or 2 chains before the stage hazards kill.
To balance the game in its current state to appeal to players going for longer chains, the hazards should freeze for longer during stage transitions, and that freeze should happen again if the player dies after a checkpoint. Furthermore, in Puyo Puyo games since Tsu, each chain sends an exponentially-increasing amount of garbage to the opponent. In this game though, each part of the chain completes the same amount of the 'objective bar' on the left.
The thing is, Puyo Puyo shines in its multiplayer. Annoying game mechanics shine in multiplayer. Why couldn't this have been a multiplayer-focused title? Instead of sending garbage, the players send ever-increasingly large death contraptions to their opponents!
Some quality-of-life stuff to mention too: The music doesn't pause on Alt-Tab, and controls can't be rebound.