Review: Pushmo

European Title screen

Ok, I need more time for my next review, so I decided to pick up a quick game (and by pick up I mean download).  This week, I will be covering the hit game, Pushmo (known as Pullblox in Europe).  This game was made by Intelligent Systems, who are famous for the Fire Emblem and Paper Mario series and was published by Nintendo.  This game is what I describe as a puzzle-platformer.  I have hear so many good things about this game and just felt I needed to check it out sooner or later.  So let's start.

Visuals                                         

Mallo after finishing 18 levels and saving all the children.

  This game had a very nice feel to it.  Everything was bright and colorful which made it a pleasure to look at.
The main character, Mallo, for the most part looks nice, except for my confusion.  I honestly had no idea what he was!  Even now that I have read that he is a "cat", I still don't see the cat in him.  That doesn't hurt the game at all, it actually helps because it gives you the sense that you are not in an average world.  This imagination for this character was interesting.  The stages also look pretty nice.  My one complaint was that the levels tend to have very similar bland backgrounds.  After a while, I did get pretty bored of them and ignored them completely.  As for the Pushmos, which is the name for the walls you must climb, they looked pretty good.  Many of them were simple shapes while others were detailed drawings of many different things.  This is what I found most impressive.  The game made excellent puzzles out of real shapes of things such as animals, houses, and other miscellaneous items.  The problem was that they all weren't interesting shapes.  Some just looked like colored pixels that made nothing.  These obviously were designed to be levels but weren't very appealing to the eye.  With this game being on the 3DS I can admit that the 3D worked perfectly in this game.  Sometimes I even felt that I could platform better when I has the 3D on.  It gave a true sense of depth instead of just further separating the character and the backdrop as many games have before.

Music                                            

The music in this game was a lot like the art style.  Very calming and child friendly.  At first, I fell in love with the music.  I would constantly hum along with the music as I jumped from platform to platform.  Soon I noticed that there is so little variety.  I would hear the same song for approximately 80 levels.  So what originated as a hum of joy became a hum of annoyance.  This song was so catchy, that even I got annoyed by it, I just couldn't stop humming.  Overall the music is of such high quality, but there definitely low quantity.

Gameplay                                            

Pushmo gameplay

This game is a puzzle platformer (as some of the other games I have reviewed at this point) so I felt very familiar with the mechanics when I started.  Just like Catherine, you must climb the "Pushmo" by pushing blocks and walls forward and back to make a path that leads to the top.  Without being able to push anything sideways, this soon made many of the repeated tricks very noticeable.  I soon knew that whenever I had a chance, I would most likely need to pull platforms all the way to the front.  Speaking of which, the platforms had four layers.  First is the furthest back layer.  These were (as the name suggests) all the way in the back, which makes them inaccessible from the sides and made impossible to stand on.  The rest of the layers are labeled with colors, being red (which meant it was pulled out all the way), yellow (which meant it had 2 "layers" to walk on) and green (which has only one layer out and can be pulled out two more times).  This made the gameplay simple enough.  Along with pushing and pulling, you can (as previously mentioned) grab walls and blocks from the side at certain situations to pull them forward or back a layer or two, depending on how much space you had to walk on.  Along with the colors to assist, the game also has two mechanics that will occasionally help you.  The first (which is mapped to the R button) allows you to see the entire Pushmo from directly in front of you.  This occasionally became helpful to see how far from the goal you are, but with the picture of the Pushmo on the bottom screen, I found myself never using this feature.  The next is actually a very helpful feature.  Much like the undo button in Catherine, this mechanic (which is mapped to the L button) allows you to turn back time for a limited amount to allow you to undo a mistake you might have made.  This, although not as helpful as an undo button, constantly helped me undoing some dire mistakes that would've made me need to start all over.  And incase you use up all of your rewind, you can hit the switch in front of every level that resets the Pushmo completely.  

Speaking of mistakes, this game has plenty of different tricks to make sure you make mistakes.  There are manholes that allow you to get from on block to the next and even switches that move all blocks of a certain color forward or back all the way.  

Pushmo gameplay

The physics for this game are honestly great.  Mallo has a very light gravity which allows you to make jumps safely and he isn't cursed by floatiness so his fall time isn't too bad.  The best part I would say are the tight controls.  At no time did I ever feel like I have lost control of him, which is a very dire feature in any platformer.  The problem I had in this gameplay was the pacing.  The goal is very simple, get to the child which is usually on the highest point with some exceptions.  The game also has no time limit which has you calmly trying to focus on finding the solution.  I found this quite boring to say the least.  With some of the levels being ridiculously easy, I felt it would have been great to include a timer or some other features to give some kind of challenge.  If not a timer why not collectibles?  This could have made it feel a little more encouraging to go back and play some levels and to make it have more replay ability.

An 8-bit Megaman Pushmo and it's QR code

Along with the 250 leveled single player.  There is also Pushmo Studio, a feature that allows you to create your own studio.  As most people who use this feature, you can design Pushmos off of 8-bit sprites as I did or even just make a new design using the grid provided.  This along with the allowance of the manholes and push/pull switches leaves endless of possibilities to be created by the fans of the games.  This feature seems fun, but takes a lot of work to make fully working Pushmos to share with friends via QR codes.

Story                                                   

Mallo being instructed be Papa Blox to continue climbing

Like most platformers, the story is very simple.  You play as Mallo, a sumo wrestling cat (did think those words would ever be put together) who is visiting Pushmo Park.  Soon he learns that many children are being trapped on the climbable playgrounds.  With the help of Papa Blox who teaches you the basics, you must go and save the kids.  After each world, you continually see a child hitting the reset switch and trapping more kids.  Very simple, but it gets the job done.

Overview                              

With my expreiences of Pushmo, I feel it is a very average game.  It isn't the easiest game out there, but isn't even close to being a real challenge.  The mechanics are very well made and the presentation is great.  Unfortunately is is ruined by the extremely slow pacing of the gameplay and the repetitive music.  Honestly, I started the game with high hopes for another puzzle game to help me pass countless hours.  In a way it did succeed but after beating approximately half of the single player levels, I found myself bored and even felt that the game was a little bothersome to play in long play sessions.  I can't rate it negatively for the bad experience I had and I must admit the level design was above average.

Mallo

I rate this game 7.5 Mallos out of 10