Green Mamba said:
http://i.imgur.com/5H5Ky.jpg
Mewtwo -
Pokémon Puzzle League
This fucker, though, I will say, I have never beaten. In the single player VS. mode, you can only fight Mewtwo at the end of V.Hard and S.Hard after beating Gary for the second time at the end. Mewtwo himself is by far the most challenging opponent in any game I've personally ever played--the speed he moves around his playing field clearing blocks and racking up stupid enormous chains is almost inhuman. Within a second you find yourself underneath a garbage block a mile high and he keeps dropping them. Unless you're an absolute Puzzle League/Tetris Attack/Panel De Pon master, it's an uphill battle the whole way from the word go. And the worst part? And if you lose to Mewtwo, you have to fight Gary again in order to get another chance to fight Mewtwo, which is no mean feat!
Yeah this is the point where you reach the game-breaking limits of the system. I've done it on S.Hard, and it wasn't too difficult for me since I am one of said PDP freaks, but at high-level play the game really kills itself. There are a few different things at work.
Stage 1) Start fast, obviously. Getting them buried first always gives you more options. This part is admittedly the most intense play of any game I have played. There was a unique sensation accompanying it, a feeling of burning inside my head. Like it was literally brain-fryingly fast. The only thing to come close was high-level Unreal Tournament play in the middle of a large fray. For PDP, I have no idea how my thumbs move so fast. Still, I longed to be able to advance my stack while blocks were still popping so I could do even more.
Stage 2) Be diverse. One huge block is easier to deal with than many tiny blocks, especially a mix of regular blocks and stone blocks. This is because when you clear a large block, the pile doesn't return to falling state until every block within it has flashed, giving you more time to set up the next line clear.
Stage 3) Don't blow your load. As mentioned above, you can set up to get the stack of garbage above you you immediately go into another transforming cycle when it finishes the current one. If you are smart and keep a steady run of 3s going you can indefinitely handle any block.
Stage 4) Be supplied for the siege. You need to leave yourself room for 3chains before they drop a stack on you, so if you know one is coming, push your stack up to give yourself more ammo for the long haul.
The rest is up to luck of the draw. You will each be using the exact same tactics. You will each have a massive stack on top of you, in threat of instant death. Once one of you is unfortunate enough to not have a 3 that can connect to the blocks above, you lose.
Pretty boring, right? These matches can easily exceed 6 minutes, too. So it really becomes a test of will to win vs boredom. Thing is, if you can beast them before they can replenish the stack, you can take them out early in like 16 seconds by suffocating them when they have only 2 lines at the bottom. That is hard to time and just as dependent on luck. Same for when they didn't keep a chain contact point at the top of their stack.
The new PDP for DS introduced weapons, sort of, which is a good move. However, it took away a color, making it over simplified and creating far too many impossible-to-avoid 3chains that higher level play was obliterated. For Pokemon Puzzle League on N64, playing in 3D expands the whole experience, and kind of helps make things not so stupid after stage 2 of advanced tactics.
I still long for the ideal PDP game. I wish fans would take to programming their own, like has happened with Tetris.
