User Reviews
There are currently 0 User Reviews for NEVESWrite your own review for this game today and you will receive 100 Gamer Points.
Click here to register
NEVES Review
Jon Wilcox
25/03/2008
TVG pieces together the jigsaw of Yuke's and Ignition Entertainment's puzzler on Nintendo DS...
Having spent the last few years programming large sweaty men to fight with each other thanks to THQ's WWE Smackdown series, Yuke's Future Media Creators have had something very different to focus on with NEVES, which arrives on Nintendo DS courtesy of Ignition Entertainment and Atari. Based on the ancient Far Eastern game of Tangram, NEVES aims to fit itself into the Tetris mould of simple, yet cruelly addictive gameplay in an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-increasing casual market, which seems to be grasping out to the DS in droves.
So does Yuke's adaptation of Tangram follow down the path of handheld puzzlers first trail-blazed by Alexey Pajitnov's classic? TVG shifted a few triangles and parallelograms to find out...
The Pieces Of The Puzzle.
Addictive puzzlers generally follow a few simple rules, and NEVES is no different: piece the seven geometric shapes into a preset silhouette. And that's it.
Over 500 different silhouettes feature in the game, from numbers to complex objects like coffee makers, Russian dancers, and rockets, and all are created with the same seven pieces. OK, so perhaps describing the 'action' of NEVES makes it sound like a slightly dull and limited interactive version of Fuzzy Felt (look it up), which isn't far wrong, but at least its core gameplay offers a decent mix of entry-level puzzles and head-scratching frustrating ones.
Using different anchor points the stylus picks up, rotates, and flips the various shapes into place, making the control system of NEVES at least as responsive and tight (which it should be - the game isn't exactly the most demanding on the market). For all its simplicity however, Yuke's still feels the need to include a pretty useless tutorial mode for newcomers - with additional hints at how to rotate pieces throughout the game's progression. Far from a requirement, in fact its insultingly patronising to anyone with a Dr Kawashima Brain Age of below 80, just get past the tutorial and move on as quickly as possible...
The simple premise is no doubt something that will attract certain quarters of the casual market, though it's unlikely to be on the shopping list of many hardcore gamers, but the fact is that NEVES doesn't enjoy the Crack-like addictive qualities that some of puzzlers of the past had sewn throughout their lines of code. It's decent enough in small doses, you just wouldn't want it to be the one game that gets stuck in your DS for eternity.
Simple Things Please...
Despite proclaiming four different game modes, the fact is that they're based on the same silhouettes. The only difference being that 7 Steps and Time Pressure have their own restrictions, so for instance, gamers have three minutes to complete a Tangram in Time Pressure or for advanced players, 7 Steps forces the puzzle to be completed within just seven moves.
Whilst the prospect of expanding the inevitable longevity of NEVES to its maximum potential is obviously of benefit, any point to the extra game modes is lost once a puzzle is complete in the standard 'Silhouette?' mode - you're gonna know how to finish it off in way under three minutes, and for the most part, in seven moves too. Making them therefore redundant, NEVES' gameplay is left feeling flat and oh so repetitive.
For gamers wanting to share the NEVES experience with others, the game also features Single-Card Download functionality and the chance to go head-to-head in the 'Bragging Rights' mode (quite possibly the most unsuitably 'cool' name for the mode). Randomly selecting three puzzles from the somewhat extensive library on offer, Bragging Rights offers some sense of competition in the same way that others have done before it - with an added extra thrown in since players get to see how their opponents are getting on in the top screen.
One last question though Yuke's? Why name the game after the Portuguese word for 'snow'???
