Neopets Puzzle Adventure is most certainly not a game that your average gamer would normally pick up. The cutesy puzzle game's shallowness is given away by its overly colorful box art and extremely simple description of what the game is all about. Clearly, this game is aimed at younger children - those who would be engaged with the Neopets website and other products - but ultimately the game is too simplistic even to appeal to these audiences.
You'll immediately notice that this game is rather ugly. Even the menus that greet you at the start of the game. As a two-dimensional puzzle game, you shouldn't be expecting much pizzazz, pretty effects, or flashy good looks. But even the simple puzzle board is fuzzy and the character icons are not very detailed. In fact, it's almost impossible to read some of the text in the game because it's so incredibly blurry. It almost feels as though the DS version was just blown up for the larger television screens without any modification.
Unfortunately, the gameplay does not do much to make up for the general unprettiness of the game. The basic premise is actually pretty interesting: it's Othello. If you don't know what Othello (also known as Reversi) is, you should go play it. It is perhaps one of the best simple board games there is. There are squares on the board and each player has discs that have different colors on each side. It starts in the middle of the board and you place a disc that encompasses one (or more) of your opponent's discs. Once enclosed by your own colored discs, your opponent's disc gets flipped over and that is now yours. You win by covering as much of the board as you can with your color. The game is especially fun because of its simplicity. But with Neopets Puzzle Adventure, its simplicity is what brings the game down. There's not enough to do.
The game varies from regular Othello slightly by adding in items and squares that are blocked. And supposedly there is a levelling system for your character, but it has no bearing on the game itself. The items add a little bit of excitement to the game - especially if you're playing against a friend in two-player mode - but aside from that, there is really not anything else to keep you or an 8 year old child interested. You are given "objectives" in the game, but they are essentially meaningless since all you do is play the Othello-style game over and over again on slightly varied game boards.
The multiplayer mode is definitely more fun than the one-player. Battling a friend for dominance on the playing board is fun enough, for a couple of rounds. The items definitely add to the two-player experience (getting that one that flips all of your opponent's pieces is extremely satisfying), but after 3 or 4 rounds, the game gets tiring.
Also tiring is the sound in the game. The music is not particularly offensive and hums along quite pleasantly as you play, but the sound effects get pretty repetitive and irritating. The fact that it's Neopets characters in the game has everything to do with this fact, and it's possible that fans of the Neopets universe may or may not find the sounds accurate for their most loved characters. But really, they need to stop chirping.
Ultimately Neopets Puzzle Adventure would only be a good purchase for a younger kid (or, even better, a pair of younger children) that may still be interested in Neopets. But there are better games to buy for them that will probably keep them distracted longer and would feel more fulfilling.
