Ever since the Game Boy was released with Tetris, nearly every handheld that has followed has been accompanied with a puzzle game looking to suck hours of time away from gamers. Lynx had Klax, Game Gear had Columns, and heck, even Game.com had Lights Out. Yet none of these handhelds were able to go the distance. Q Entertainment’s other project, Lumines, is currently buoying the PSP, but the question is can their DS offering, Meteos, do the same? The answer is yes and no.

The game is a cross between Bejeweled, a classic PC puzzler which has been ported to nearly every system imaginable, and Columns, Sega’s long and thankfully forgotten puzzler. Combine this with the wonderful world of physics and you’ve got Meteos.

Your goal is simply to save your home planet from bombardment by fusing the Meteos and firing them back at the evil planet raining them upon you. To fuse Meteos, you simply need to connect three blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. You can only move blocks vertically, so you must plan your moves in advance. Once fused, these blocks will then ignite and turn into rockets, which will fire upward in an attempt to escape the planet.

Any blocks that are above the fused ones are along for the ride. If the blocks make it to the top of your screen, you’re golden. They’ll disappear and be fired at your opponents, and therein lies the problem. If your rockets don’t launch high enough, they’ll burn out, and begin falling back down. Any blocks that have been ignited will remain burnt out for a few seconds, but, by connecting more blocks within the group that you’re trying to launch, or by creating new platforms below, you can boost the group out of orbit. Once a stack of Meteos reaches the top of the playing board, the game is over.

While you can speed up the rate at which blocks fall, you’ll quickly find that the rate of speed and difficulty at which Meteos increases borders on insane. The average game will only last around five minutes, unlike the two-hour forays Lumines aficionados have come to expect. Although the games end quickly, the breadth of options and game modes are what will keep gamers coming back for more.

Meteos features four main game modes: “Simple,” “Star Trip,” “Deluge,” and “Time War.” “Simple” is just that, as it’s a practice mode which allows you to play a match against up to three CPU opponents. “Star Trip” is essentially the story mode of Meteos, which has you battling up to three planets at the same time, all of which are dumping blocks on you. You can select from three versions of Star Trip, some of which branch out into multiple endings for you to discover. “Deluge” is the survival mode, and “Time War” features four “time trial” type missions for you to complete. After each game, the Meteos that you’ve sent into orbit are put into inventory, which can be used to unlock new planet items, sounds and music.

Each planet has different characteristics which affect game play. Some planets require that you have an incredible amount of thrust to reach escape velocity, while others have watery environments that cause blocks to slowly float downwards.

The 16-bit-style visuals are very basic, with the exception of some of the cut-scenes which superficially wrap the story. The colors of the blocks are sometimes difficult to discern, but the game generally features competent puzzler graphics. The majority of gameplay takes place on the touch screen, while the top screen displays time, score, and other player information.

The variety of music and sound is nice, but no Grammies will be going out this year. I got excited when I saw “Shinin’” as an unlockable and got a type of MIDI riff instead. We’ve all been spoiled by Lumines, and this only makes it more obvious. Meteos is really missing that addictive theme song that will stick in your head. The sound effects are fine, but again, they’re far from exciting.

This game is made for the touch-screen and it shows. As they say, “touching is good,” and there’s nothing like the gratification of flicking a block up from a pile and launching a combo. When things get frantic and you’re trying to grab a block and miss, you’ll get frustrated, but you’ll just be mad at yourself rather at some kind of superficial control problem. Once in a while, you can get away with scribbling -- the “button mashing” of touch screens -- but typically scribbling doesn’t work, which is a good thing, especially in multiplayer.

Speaking of which, the multiplayer aspect includes four-player, single cart play, as well as a downloadable demo that will remain on your friends’ (or local game store’s) DS until power down. As usual, single cart play is a little more limited compared to multi-cart, but it’s not limited enough to ruin the experience. 

Meteos has a different type of stickiness than other puzzle games in that it features a ton of game modes, unlockable levels and items, giving it a level of depth that is extremely unusual for a puzzle game . The real thing that seems to keep Meteos from the status of a classic puzzler is that it’s truly impossible to get into “the zone” for any more than a few seconds because the game is so frantic and the rounds are so short-lived. The greatest, most addictive puzzle games of all time seem to feature opportunities where you could essentially blank out for an extended period of time in a Zen-like state of focus. If you blink towards the five-minute mark in Meteos, your game is over. Also, you’ll sometimes be able to beat CPU opponents simply because the round ends, leaving you to be the winner through dumb luck. No one likes to win a puzzle game by luck.

Overall: 8/10

Meteos is a solid puzzler, and at this point in the DS’ lifetime, it is a must have, especially for any fan of puzzle games. It won’t sustain the DS like Lumines is doing for the PSP, and it might not necessarily please the casual gamer, but it should sit solidly in many systems for the next few months until the next group of big releases hit the system.