I was a pretty big fan of the original Pushmo, a downloadable title for the 3DS, so much so that it made it to my list of favorite games of all time. That game introduced a great, unique, addictive, and satisfyingly deep puzzle mechanic, with the added bonuses of pixel art and user created stages, not to mention plenty of personality and charm.
Pushmo World, a downloadable title for Wii U, maintains the core experience of the original, so it's still a solid title. It was first announced last May, and even then I was skeptical: I felt that adding a few more types of blocks just didn't seem like enough to warrant a sequel. As with Mario Galaxy 2, rather than a sequel the game feels more like a slightly enhanced version of the original. I'm assuming none of the puzzles are exactly the same as the original, but there are many that felt practically identical. For the most part the puzzles that feature the new mechanics are segregated to a different area within the game, and there are only 50 total compared to the 150 in the main mode, so as a whole they seem under emphasized. Being a vet of the first game it was fairly easy to just brute force my way through the majority of the levels without much thought or effort, and although I enjoyed revisiting the game's mechanics I found that playing through this game less than two and a half years than the original was a little too soon since the bulk of it is more or less the same as the original. Still, it was fun to collect stamps to use on Miiverse and once again see all the cool levels that people have created. For people who haven't played the original this is an easy recommendation, but otherwise this is pretty safe to skip.
Push through these Pushmo World links:
- Review at NintendoLife
- Community on Miiverse
- Page on official Nintendo site
- Review from Polygon
- Complete video walkthrough on YouTube