Meteos is a product of irrational exuberance, a work of love that took one interesting idea and polished the hell out of it until, finally, it was deleriously attractive. The developers, Q Entertainment, were so enraptured with their creation that their webpage goes beyond the informative and is an explosion of hyperactivity. Famitsu Magazine's cross-review, notoriously hard on games, gave Meteos 38/40, a stratospheric score, but I fear they might have gauged it on sheer ebullience.
What is it?
Meteos is a product of irrational exuberance, a work of love that took one interesting idea and polished the hell out of it until, finally, it was deleriously attractive. The developers, Q Entertainment, were so enraptured with their creation that their webpage goes beyond the informative and is an explosion of hyperactivity. Famitsu Magazine's cross-review, notoriously hard on games, gave Meteos 38/40, a stratospheric score, but I fear they might have gauged it on sheer ebullience.
The Game
Meteos is easy to figure out. Use the stylus to select and drag any coloured icon vertically to another position. Form three in a row horizontally or vertically and they'll turn into rockets, propelling themselves and the blocks above them to the top of the screen, launching an assault on the other player(s). Easy, except it's not. Blocks are constantly and randomly falling from the sky, filling your playfield. As the player 
progresses, speed increases and the blocks fall like snow, rapidly filling the screen. Successfully launching blocks is the primary way to clear them, but it's not as simple as that.
When three or more rockets fire, the blocks turn black. They'll remain black until a few seconds after the rockets stop firing, at which time they'll turn to random colours. If one group of blocks slams into the bottom of another group, they'll stick together. Large clusters of black blocks will generally stick two clusters together, more solidly. Forming very large chunks will require more rockets to lift.
Rockets flare briefly and have limited power. A vertical row of three will usually launch an entire column off the screen, but a horizontal row can be overwhelmed by the number of blocks piled on top refuse to rise very far. This brings us to the core mechanic of Meteos:
progresses, speed increases and the blocks fall like snow, rapidly filling the screen. Successfully launching blocks is the primary way to clear them, but it's not as simple as that.
When three or more rockets fire, the blocks turn black. They'll remain black until a few seconds after the rockets stop firing, at which time they'll turn to random colours. If one group of blocks slams into the bottom of another group, they'll stick together. Large clusters of black blocks will generally stick two clusters together, more solidly. Forming very large chunks will require more rockets to lift.
Rockets flare briefly and have limited power. A vertical row of three will usually launch an entire column off the screen, but a horizontal row can be overwhelmed by the number of blocks piled on top refuse to rise very far. This brings us to the core mechanic of Meteos:
Combos
While a clump of blocks is in the air you can continue sliding blocks around either within the clump or below it, creating more rockets. If the new rockets are at the base of a clump, the entire clump will rise. If a slowly falling clump touches down and another group is created before the black blocks return to normal, it counts as a combo. You can even fling blocks from below a clump into the clump itself, allowing for a very generous variety in combo making.
Combos rack up the points quickly, each successive rocket blast that raises all or part of an existing clump gives a +1 increase to the multiplier: x2, x3, x4 and so on.
[sound of crashing car]
It's a simple mechanic, and not unlike PacPix it seems like the developer just piled shit on top of the core game until it was completely overwhelmed. All the effervescence has rotted, and the game's simple concept is polluted with variety. There's a basic game with a straight-up playfield size, and rules that don't change. It just gets faster and faster, and it seems that this was the original game and it's easy to see how it might get old in short order.
So they added to it, and didn't seem to know when they should stop. The game's other modes include a time attack and challenge, which vary little from the main game. The longevity comes from StarTrip mode, where the player attempts to beat a string of planets to reach the final level, usually unlocking the usual crap on the way. Extra player icons, music for the music player and similar bonuses are awarded, seemingly at random.
The problem is that every planet has its own rules, and there's nearly thirty different planets. Each planet will have different gravity, so that sometimes rockets will zip off the screen and sometimes they'll barely rise at all. Sometimes clumps will fall quickly and rest on the ground for several seconds before the black blocks reset, and sometimes they'll fall very slowly with almost no settling time. Sometimes the level isn't as wide as normal, sometimes vertical groups fail to launch anything at all, so only horizontal blocks will have any effect. Every planet has different graphics for the blocks, and while most of them are easily discernable coloured squares, some are crazy designs, selected haphazardly through a competition at a drunken office party, no doubt.
You never know what a planet will do until you try something and it doesn't work. A carefully prepared combo completely fails to work when the first clump leaves the screen unassisted, or your triumphant desperation move is laughed off by extra gravity. I suppose if you memorized the rules of all twenty nine planets you might have an advantage, but whoah, that sounds suspiciously like work to me. If that wasn't enough, some player characters have a preference for different coloured blocks.
So they added to it, and didn't seem to know when they should stop. The game's other modes include a time attack and challenge, which vary little from the main game. The longevity comes from StarTrip mode, where the player attempts to beat a string of planets to reach the final level, usually unlocking the usual crap on the way. Extra player icons, music for the music player and similar bonuses are awarded, seemingly at random.
The problem is that every planet has its own rules, and there's nearly thirty different planets. Each planet will have different gravity, so that sometimes rockets will zip off the screen and sometimes they'll barely rise at all. Sometimes clumps will fall quickly and rest on the ground for several seconds before the black blocks reset, and sometimes they'll fall very slowly with almost no settling time. Sometimes the level isn't as wide as normal, sometimes vertical groups fail to launch anything at all, so only horizontal blocks will have any effect. Every planet has different graphics for the blocks, and while most of them are easily discernable coloured squares, some are crazy designs, selected haphazardly through a competition at a drunken office party, no doubt.
You never know what a planet will do until you try something and it doesn't work. A carefully prepared combo completely fails to work when the first clump leaves the screen unassisted, or your triumphant desperation move is laughed off by extra gravity. I suppose if you memorized the rules of all twenty nine planets you might have an advantage, but whoah, that sounds suspiciously like work to me. If that wasn't enough, some player characters have a preference for different coloured blocks.
And so...
I don't get it. There's no doubt the pedigree behind this game is really incredible, Q Entertainment was founded by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, responsible for such forgettable titles as Sega Rally, Rez and Space Channel 5. The enthusiasm was there - the number of updates to the Meteos webpage numbers in the hundreds. The quality is there, this game is far more polished then their PSP release, Lumines, with no bugs (yet!) and better presentation.
But where's the fun?
The basic game doesn't hold my attention for long, and all the other modes do is piss me off. I've tried to like it - I'm four hours into it (it records time played) and with the scores and attention it's received I was sure that I was just missing something. I'm still not convinced I've figured it all out, but I'm starting to wonder if it's worth much more effort to try.
Lawrence.