Puz: Zero Count [by BCSoft]

Game Review: Zero Count
Release Date: March 31, 2003
Developer: BCSoft
Genre: Puzzle
System Requirements: 98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 8.0+, 400 mhz, OpenGL Video Card
Players: 1-2 (versus)
Price: $14.99
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Zero Count (which has nothing to do with the William Gibson novel Count Zero) is a Puyo Puyo-style game where dyads of colored blocks fall down and you rotate and move them to make chains of 3 or more blocks of the same color. You can play by yourself or against an opponent. There are 25 levels, and new colors of blocks appear as you progress to higher levels. There is a special block which is a wild card that acts as any color. Since the blocks always come in pairs there isn't the fitting-square-pegs-into-round-holes challenge of Tetris. You do get debris to clean up in the 2-player challenge mode.

This is a very simple game– no story, no amazing theme, and only one kind of bonus. Although, from the It's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature department, I discovered that in the 2-player mode you can map both players to the same set of controls, resulting in your button-presses rotating and moving two different falling pieces at the same time. That makes the gameplay interesting, but since the game wasn't designed to be played this way the difficulty was scaled such that I always lost pretty quickly.

Graphics: 6
The colors are bright, and the menus and backgrounds have a theme of beach balls and beaches, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the gameplay, but is pleasant enough and matches the music. The way the top of the playing field is portrayed is misleading since you don't actually have as many usable rows as it seems that you do and there are no cool special effects if you make a big combo.

Sound: 6
The music has a cute nautical/seaside feel, which fits with the background art. The little “Yippee!” sound effect for getting a combo is fun, though different sound effects for different combos would be better.

Game Play: 5
There really isn't much more to the game than I have explained. There's nothing wrong with the gameplay, it's just too simplistic for my tastes

Value: 4
It is simple enough for a young child to play and it is best suited to the more casual gamers. It is best in the two-player challenge mode and your opponent doesn’t even have to be good at games to be fun competition.

Concept: 4
It is very simple concept. Still, simple is not always a bad thing. There is nothing difficult about this game other than surviving through the higher levels. It is easy for anyone to pick up and play. You can even play against your mother!

Fun: 4
It was kind of amusing to play Zero Count in 2-player challenge mode against my roommate because in the challenge mode, making combos or going up levels results in extra blocks being dumped on your opponent.

Overall: 5
In conclusion, this game is simple and doesn’t giving the player any feeling of being excessively challenged or accomplishing impressively tricky maneuvers, though it is fun to try to set yourself up for large combos. To me, though, it feels kind of like a sorting exercise on a par with putting groceries away in their proper cabinets.
Added: May 4th 2005
Reviewer: Mare Kuntz
Score:
Hits: 3140
Language: english