Stream of Consciousness- Aqua Panic! Review

Despite a slight change in moniker, recent Playsation Network title Aqua Panic! offers the same gratification as its portable counterpart. Like the PSP iteration, each of the title’s eighty stages begins the same way. Players are given an infinite amount of time to explore the level and plan their strategy. When they are ready to test their tactics, a press of the start button sends a stream of fish from the uppermost part of the screen, which follow the flow of gravity, spilling downward. As environmental pools fill, water and sea life leak over. While that’s usually a situation gamers want to avoid, cleverly placed coins sporadically encourage these risky practices. In the end, gamers want to escort all their fish to the games safety zone and out of the mouths of ravenous sharks.

To assist players in getting as many of the hundred aquatic creatures to a safe zone to the bottom of the playfield, gamers are given an ever-increasingly varied toolset. One of the first devices is a bomb, which has the ability to blow a large fissure in sections of the environment, creating a drain hole. Later, players will are given harpoons to eliminate hostile predators from the landscape, and even taught how to use spinning snails as faucets to regulate the stream of fish. Shrewdly, Aqua Panic! never overwhelms introductory players with a surplus of unfamiliar equipment. Each new device is gradually introduced- allowing players to get hooked on the title’s mechanics before the game’s more arduous brainteasers are ushered in.

In spite of its cartoonish aesthetics, Aqua Panic! can be a challenging title. Although calculating where each of the limited number of tools should be placed is suitably taxing, the actual positioning of many objects can be even more demanding. A plant which functions as a dam can be errantly positioned so that some of the cascading sea forms trickle over and end up in the mouths of the game’s foes. Although the title occasionally desires pixel-perfect precision, there’s a notable lack of any zoom feature. Likewise, the ability to pan back and see the complete playfield on-screen, or even to adjust the speed of the cursor is notably absent.

While these omissions aren’t deal-breakers, they will induce the sporadic restart when players fail to save each stages specified number of fish. Luckily, a press of the select button will initiate start the level anew, without even a pause to load data. Unlike many puzzle games, where each stage result in a binary success/failure outcome, Aqua Panic! levels may permit multiple play-throughs, for the completions who feel compelled to save every sea creature. For less-compulsive gamers, the title offers the ability to purchase additional tools to bypass a particularly strenuous stage.

Aqua Panic!‘s greatest asset may be its vibrant visual style, which separates the title from a sea of similar puzzlers. From a radiant, smiling sun to the scarcity of any straight line in the environment (save for the gaping jaws of the game’s enemies) the title in undeniably eye-catching- with a color palette seemingly borrowed from the Nintendo catalog. While the game’s soundtrack aims to be equally enchanting, the brevity of individual tracks leads to looping melodies. Fortunately, players can create their own accompaniment with the Aqua Panic!‘s ability to play music from the PS3 hard drive.

Along with unique PSN titles like Elefunk, Piyotama and Trash Panic, Aqua Panic! is an enjoyable, visually pleasing game which can amiably occupy the leisure time of any puzzle enthusiast. For the ten dollar price of admission, the title offers at least seven hours of head scratching in the game’s Adventure mode, with the ability to extend that duration in Survival and Free modes.