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Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits

What if Dig Dug met Tetris? What if they fell in love and had baby? That child would grow up to be Mr. Driller. By digging away at various blocks the rest of the walls collapse, and when blocks of the same color match up, they are eliminated from the field – much like any other puzzle game. The basic formula hasn’t changed over the years. The DS does get a little bit of a workout with this entry, but don’t expect this title to be the showcase piece for Nintendo’s new handheld.

Opening the path of multicolored blocks sounds easy enough, and it is. Doing so in a manner to connect combos and not get squished by falling blocks is another matter.

There are three modes initially available in Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits. The first (and predominant) one is the Mission Driller, this has players collecting capsules of air as well as measuring how many points are collected. Don’t let blocks fall on you or you’re a squished Mr. Driller and one of the lives is gone. This is very much like an arcade game – and it is here that other character can be unlocked.

Pressure Driller eliminated the air gauge, but instead adds a monstrous oversized drilling machine boring down from above. The machine will drop down blocks to pose as obstacles in Mr. Driller’s path, but the little guy can blast up at the mechanical arms to blow it out of the ground. There are some power ups to make the shots a bit stronger, so those are something to look for (as well as avoiding all the falling blocks while making combinations).

Time Attack Driller is just what one expects. How quickly can you get from the top to the bottom? Here quick thinking in order to find the solution is the order of the day, and it is the puzzle game in the purest form.

Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits has a multiplayer mode where players attempt to get to the bottom of the hole first. The Japanese version of the game allowed for one cart to be used for multiplayer, but here each player needs to own a copy. Also gone is a mode where time isn’t an issue but the number of moves allowed to complete the field is limited. Since language isn’t really a barrier, it doesn’t make sense for Namco to have cut the game short.

The graphics are as good as can be expected for a puzzle game. Clean, crisp, bright, and easy to discern each of the different colors. You couldn’t ask for any more in this department. The sound is also well done, but the music is not as memorable as it could be. That’s fine, the big judge really is the graphics anyway.

Controls in Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits, however, need mentioning. Since this is a DS game, the bottom touch screen can be used with the stylus to move Mr. Driller about. This doesn’t work as well as using the Dpad and right trigger button. Stick with the analog controls and many of the frustrations will abate.

To help make the general gameplay last a bit longer, the game offers up a store, with the currency being the mileage gone down into the earth. There are two different stores actually, one for purchasing power ups in Pressure Driller and one for Mission Driller.

When the drilling is done though, what we have is a sad port of a great game. This is an inferior version of the Japanese game, and one has to wonder why. Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits is still worth getting for the single player game, partly because there really aren’t any other puzzle games available for the Nintendo DS at this point.

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Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Feb 4th, 2005 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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