Enigmo
Review
Like Beer Pong but better
by Kiran Sury
reviewed on PS3
Like Beer Pong but Better
Have you ever played that game with a ping-pong ball and a cup? You know, the one you play after beer pong gets boring, when you try to bounce the ball off of different surfaces and get it to land in the cup?
Enigmo is a lot like that.
Originally developed by Pangea Software and ported to PS3 by Beatshapers, Enigmo is a four-dollar puzzle game sold under the Playstation Minis banner. It is worth noting that as of this review the game is free for Playstation Plus subscribers, so if you belong to that crowd you might as well stop reading and go download the game.
Less affluent gamers who have to scrutinize each and every purchase might be suspicious of the low price tag. Let me put your fears to rest: Enigmo is not a bad game hoping you will buy it because it is cheap. It is, however, rather simple.
Not Very Enigmatic
Enigmo is a game all about guiding drops of water into a vessel (all the while with supposedly realistic physics). The water leaks out of one location in a constant stream, the vessel is somewhere else, and a timer counts down to zero. If you don’t finish before the timer ends, don’t worry; you will just lose some bonus points. You have all the time in the world to complete each level.
At your disposal are eight different tools, but half of them are iterations of each other. There are three different types of bounce pads that will rebound the water at different rates, slabs of concrete that break the flow of water and channel it in a different direction, a sponge to absorb water and release it in a steady drip and a cannon that takes in water at the base and shoots it out from the tip at high speed. Each level restricts you to a certain number of certain types of tools, so you will have to become familiar with all of them to progress.
The game claims to be 3D but that is a flat-out lie. True, the graphics are rendered in 3D, but they’re superimposed on a 2D plane, much like how Street Fighter 4 has 3D character models but is a 2D fighting game. You place your items wherever you like and rotate them however you like… and that is it. I don’t mean to deride the gameplay – guiding the water to the end is fun, and the satisfaction I got after completing a particularly intricate level was good enough to make me ignore my roommate as he stood next to and insulted me. But the mechanics are almost too simple, never change, and new tools are never introduced. It is the same gameplay through and through for all 50 levels.
6.5
fun score
Pros
Low price, decent fun.
Cons
Terrible sound, imprecise controls, one-note gameplay.
