Mii Plaza: Puzzle Swap (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Whilst with StreetPass Quest any people that had the Nintendo 3DS early - and were, therefore, unable to meet up with lots of other 3DS owners whilst on their travels - could ‘cheat’ in a way by using the portable’s in-built pedometer to rack up 1,000 Steps Walked for the reward of ten of the hardware’s Play Coins that could then be spent on ‘hiring’ five low-level heroes for battling purposes, Mii Plaza’s second game, Puzzle Swap proves rather limited. Now that the system has launched across Europe, the full extent of Puzzle Swap has been unleashed. Cubed3 has been trading like crazy to unlock as many of the image cards in Puzzle Swap as possible and having a thoroughly good time in doing so. Nintendo’s aim of getting the StreetPass message out there into the general domain definitely benefits from the likes of StreetPass Quest and this trading card-esque title.

The basic premise of this Mii Plaza game is that your Nintendo 3DS has a random image to be found in Puzzle Swap, which in the case of Cubed3’s unit was one entitled ‘Kirby.’ Each image is broken into a 3x5 grid meaning there are 15 tiles to collect if you wish to complete the full picture. New tiles can be obtained either by trading two Play Coins at a time, or meeting new Mii folk using StreetPass out in the real world and then coming back home to select one tile that you did not previously have from each stranger’s collection. The former technique can prove frustrating, especially before meeting others using StreetPass because it will randomly throw a ‘new’ tile at the board; the reason for the inverted commas there is due to the fact that the amount of times the same tile appears more than once is very high, making you feel like two Play Coins have been wasted. This is clearly Nintendo’s aim, though, as the idea is indeed to hit the streets with the 3DS in your pocket, bag, coat, or wherever.

Some of the cards that can be picked up include the likes of a depiction of Samus, fully suited and booted in Metroid: Other M striking an attacking pose, another showing off Super Mario Galaxy 2, and The Legend of Zelda getting a look-in as well. Others, meanwhile, generally are mere character cards, focusing on Mario and Bowser, Kirby, and even those loveable Pikmin, with a few being animations and others being mere 3D statues that still look great with the added depth, as well as the fact that the Circle Pad can be used to move the pictures / scenes around. Puzzle Swap may not be anywhere near as deep as Face Raiders or as inventive as AR Games: AR Shot, but it is yet another free inclusion from Nintendo that benefits the 3DS system, allowing users to get a full grasp of features they may otherwise have overlooked.