Pogo Island Hands-On

January 24th, 2007, 23:36 Posted By: wraggster

via ign

Recently, we had a chance to visit EA's Redwood Shores office and go hands-on with several of the company's upcoming titles. Of course, there were all of the flashy games that we have come to expect from EA scattered around the demo room, but hidden away in one of the corners was a DS demo station setup to show off the soon-to-be-released Pogo Island, and we had a chance to take it for a ride.

Pogo Island is an offshoot of the popular casual gamer website Pogo.com. Pogo.com features a variety of games, all of them designed with the less hardcore gaming crowd in mind. Pogo Island for the DS takes five of the most popular games from Pogo.com and brings them to the DS, along with some added touch screen functionalities. In addition to this, the game also features a new story mode, wherein players must complete various mini-games scattered across a tropical island, as they seek to reunite several stranded Pogo mascots.

The five games included in Pogo Island are Tri-Peaks Solitaire, Poppit, Word Whomp, Squelchies, and Phlinx. Tri-Peaks Solitaire is just a slight variation on the classic card game, whereas Poppit, Phlinx, and Squelchies are all puzzle games based off of other more notable franchises. Squelchies plays out a lot like Bust-A-Move DS, complete with touch screen control over aiming. Phlinx is somewhat similar to Columns, and challenges players to reorganize groups of colored blocks. Poppit asks players to pop similarly colored balloons through use of the stylus. Word Whomp plays exactly like the popular flash game, Text Twist, where players must unscramble a batch of random letters to form as many unique words as possible.

What about PEEL?

In our admittedly limited time with the game, we found Word Whomp to be the most fun out of all of the games, closely followed by Squelchies -- but it may be our own love of anything even remotely related to Bust-A-Move that is making us think like that. Word Whomp seemed to have the most longevity of all the games, simply due to the fact that word challenges like this are some of the best ways to stave off boredom.

Of course, the object of all of these mini-games is more than just distracting yourself from reality. By playing the individual games as well as the story mode, players can earn tokens, which can be redeemed at Pogo.com to purchase clothes and items for your in-game avatar. When you start the DS game, you will be allowed to enter in your Pogo.com account information, and thereby synch your DS copy of Pogo Island with your online account. To us, this seemed like the biggest draw of the game, even though it only applies to those players who also have a Pogo.com account.

The game also features a multiplayer mode in the form of single-cart download play. Unfortunately, at this point, the only game that is playable over the ad hoc wireless network is Word Whomp. Despite the fact that this was our favorite game of the bunch, it is a little upsetting that there won't be more variety to the multiplayer experience.

The graphical style of the game is pretty simple, even for DS standards. Anyone who is expecting something more than a collection of the most popular Pogo.com games will be sorely disappointed. The games have gotten a slight makeover to accompany their move to the DS, but this is mostly a cosmetic change more than anything else. The games now have a Tropical Island theme to them, rather than the standard Pogo.com art style.

Currently under development by EA Canada at Vancouver, Pogo Island should be hitting the DS on March 26, 2007. If you are one of those out there that is in love with simple, addictive mini-games, then you will want to make a trip to Pogo Island.

There are 0 comments - Join In and Discuss Here