Cutie Pets Pick Berries (Wii U) Review

Cutie Pets Pick Berries is blissfully uncomplicated. Gameplay consists of a variety of berries and fruits arranged in semi-random patterns contained in a circle. The only goal is to match all the like fruits together in chains. It's a simple and admittedly addicting puzzle, but the shine wears off dreadfully fast.
While the base mechanics aren't particularly complicated, there are a few levels of nuance that exist here, but they aren't ever explained through any sort of tutorial. While Cutie Pets Pick Berries doesn't particularly need one, some of the more interesting game mechanics take a fair bit of patience to uncover, and a brief overview of these would have really made it less aggravating in the long run.

While the core objective is always to simply clear the board, there are some extra bonuses for speed and elegance, if elegance is a term that can be applied to this title. Clearing three stages in rapid succession provides an extra bonus stage that's generally easy to clear and racks up points extremely fast, while clearing all the fruit without ever lifting the stylus from the touchscreen also provides a bonus. Given how these are the most feasible way to rack up points, there's no real reason to continue a run if an early mess-up is made.

Annoyingly, the controls aren't as precise as they could be in a game that demands so much precision to achieve the highest possible score, and it's infuriatingly easy to slightly nudge the stylus off course, breaking the fruit chain. Starting over in a chain requires tapping a fruit entirely separate in the same grouping, but not connected to the current group. Given the small size, this is an extremely annoying process, and it's generally just worth letting the timer wind down to start over after a mistake, given the lack of a reset button.

Later on, it's almost impossible to clear a stage in the amount of time needed to unlock bonus stages given the pace of the clock. Since they're one of the few ways of breaking up the monotony, it ends up feeling like the basic stages are all there is to the game, which, functionally, is true. It doesn't feel like a lot of balance or playtesting went into these later stages, and given how easy it is to get to that point through combos alone, it's weird to have the action drop off so suddenly.

The Wii U feels like a strange choice for this title, given that its quick nature feels very suited to the mobile landscape, and even the design elements feel unsuited to the platform. The anthro deer are definitely unique and fun characters, but again, don't feel particularly suited to the Wii U. Aside from score based bragging rights, high scores do reward stamps that can be used on Miiverse, but it's a paltry reward given the scope of obtaining them, and the limited avenues to use them in.

To boot, the Wii U GamePad is the only input method available, which makes sense considering that the touchscreen is the ideal way to present a match style game on the platform, but using it in conjunction with the stylus becomes tiring after a very short amount of time. Given the bulky nature of the touchpad, it's not really suited for extended stylus use, and given the fast-paced nature of the gameplay, hands will be cramping up in no time.