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It's a classic puzzle game, they say. Pipe Mania has sold a bazillion copies since its Amiga days, therefore it's got to be worth playing. A rather large percentage of everybody seems to love, or at least ended up owning, some version of this game. So it came as something of a surprise to find out just how much fun this new version of Pipe Mania isn't. The new additions overcomplicate a design that works because of its simplicity, while the touch and dual screens of the DS don't help any.
Pipe Mania is a perfect example of what happens when a decent old game gets cluttered up with unnecessary elements.
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The object of Pipe Mania is to connect a faucet to a drain using a variety of pipe pieces laid down on a grid. A timer counts down and, once it hits zero, the flooze starts flowing. It doesn't move very quickly, so there's plenty of time to keep building, but once the flooze starts it's important to have a plan for the pipe pieces ahead.
There are seven basic shapes to choose from: four kinds of elbow bends, horizontal and vertical pipes, and a plus-shaped junction, with variations such as one-way pipes or wild cards that let you draw the pipe's shape introduced as the game progresses. The more pieces used to connect the start and finish the higher the score, with bonuses awarded for using both the horizontal and vertical pipes of the junction piece, or hitting the special pipes on the board. A good level will end up as a huge labyrinth snaking every which way, and building it should be a lot more fun than it is.
Something in the gameplay just refuses to click into place though. The touch-screen controls are obnoxious and fiddly, and having the next piece displayed on the top when it's going to be placed in the bottom makes it very easy to misread the board. You can replace a wrong tile with the right one, but there's a small point penalty that lets you know what a bad, un-clever person you are to waste a tile. Additionally, at level's end each unused tile has a point deduction to go with it, and when the entire pipeline is built except for one specific piece there's not a whole lot of room for improvisation.
Being penalized for things that are out of your control doesn't fall under any definition of entertainment, and that's especially true of the boss fights in World mode. The boss will make a group of pipes leak, and when the leak meter fills it's time to retry the level. You repair the pipe by touching it, which (coincidentally enough) is the exact same action that lays down a tile. I managed to beat one boss out of eight, and every time I attempt the second boss I end up closing the DS out sheer annoyance halfway through.
To Pipe Mania's credit, it tries to make up for its failed gameplay by piling on tons of content. In addition to the dozens of levels of World mode there's also Classic, Arcade, and Extra levels to play. Classic is the original game, and due to its simpler nature is also the most fun. The levels are more open, encouraging the creation of bigger and crazier pipe layouts, and it introduces new elements at a much more measured pace. The problem is that Classic shows just how poorly designed the main portion of the game is, which isn't something a bonus mode should do.
The other two modes don't fare much better than World. Arcade has forced side-scrolling, with the object being to keep the flooze on screen while building a pipeline to the drain. Extra is divided between two puzzle modes, one involving rotating the pre-arranged pieces to create a solid pipeline and the other of which has you replacing the missing tiles. While these are actually fairly decent puzzles, the problem is that unlocking more than just the first few involves playing through World mode, and that's far too high a price.
Pipe Mania is a perfect example of what happens when a decent old game gets cluttered up with unnecessary elements. The boss fights are pure awful, the cramped layouts are annoying to build around, and dividing the information between screens is amazingly bad design. For fans of the original it might be worth checking out Classic mode, but anything outside of that is best ignored.
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