Second Look: Treasures of Montezuma Blitz

In this day and age, the days where patching a game after-the-fact has more or less become standard across all platforms, we normally only see minor tweaks here and there in that form.  Bug-fixes, tweaking a piece of code to improve performance, or simply introducing code for downloadable items.  Normal stuff like that.  It's rare that a patch actually does anything to improve a game in a real, tangible way, but when these instances crop up, they should be lauded and appreciated accordingly.  Especially when they take a game that wasn't much of one and injects a wholesale shot of fun into it.  And double especially when said update causes me to compulsively play a game I had previously stated something of a mild distaste for in the past because I find that I am actually enjoying it.  Somehow.  I say all of this because oh god, I'm sure you realize why I'm saying this by now.

Anyways, I don't know what it is, exactly, about the patch that has been introduced to Treasures of Montezuma Blitz that has made it so much fun, but let me assure you right off that it is, indeed, fun, despite being the same game in many ways.  Rounds are still a minute long (barring matching tokens that have time extenders on them), and it's still the same basic game, thought improvements on the XP system allow for growth on a ridiculous level.  (Note that I am Level 12 in the above screenshot, where the last time I was Level...0.  I honestly haven't played the game a lot)  The score system similarly seems to have been amped up as, once again if you refer to the first post about the game, I was impressed by a score of 36,800 points, where I have now gotten to the mid hundred thousands (446,200 here making me ranked first in my list for what will be a pathetically short amount of time because Radthanael and Aubvry will demolish that in short order) and while that's my 'bragging zone' (I believe I've managed 600k on one occasion) it's decidedly ridiculous how wide the gap has gotten.  Yes, I'm higher level and yes, I have perks now, but still.

Realistically speaking, for being the same game, it's practically an entire new one with the improvements that have been made, if you haven't gathered.  Where I criticized it initially for being too short, for taking too little of your time, I now find that, as default, the game almost refuses to let you go.  Free Lives are earned in ways that I can't even begin to comprehend, so the five you're normally given (provided you play every day, you get -bonus lives- if you skip a day) almost -always- amount to more than that which turns what could seem to be 5-7 minutes of gaming to, honest-to-god 20+ minutes.  That is, if you simply play until you're out of lives for the day, as I imagine everyone does.  Knowing that the gaming time is 'limited' drives me to enjoy, to wring every second possible out of it, and I've found, several times now, that I think "Oh god, how do I still have three lives left, I've played like five rounds!".  I said it and I mean it as such:  the game does not want to let you go.

If you've downloaded the game already (remember, it's free), then going back is certainly recommended.  Only if you have a lot of time to spend on it, of course.  As I've stated, not only will the game shower you with lives for all the days you've missed, but you'll earn about half of them as freebies in the course of play.  This is honestly the best method of understanding the game, really, since you almost don't have to worry about the fact that you can only play it for so long.  Chances are, that 'so long' might even be longer than you'd be willing to invest otherwise.  But if you can start and stop, then you have a stronger will than I, friend, or simply a distaste for matching jewel games.  For the price (of nothing), I certainly can't insist you exercise caution any longer:  get the game, if just for something to play when you have a few minutes here and there or when you're just sitting around, perhaps not really wanting to play anything else.  I don't rightly think that there's a way that you could honestly regret the decision to get it.

Have I mentioned that the game has trophies now, by the way?  Because it has trophies now.  I'm not sure just how it got away with releasing -without- trophies in the start, perhaps because of the fact that it is, indeed, free, but for whatever reason, it has them now.  It's a fairly short list (only one gold, no platinum) that will give you quite a bit of challenge if you decide you want to fill it out completely, so this isn't a game to grab to quickly inflate your trophy count, but they're there regardless.  And the game is fun, too.  I believe I stated that somewhere along the line, but I think I haven't stressed it enough.  So maybe I should just really lay it all on the line really simply.  The game is free and fun (now), so it's definitely worth a download and minutes of your time every day unless you just aren't a fan of the type of game.  Which is certainly understandable.  Or if you have an addictive personality because this game will likely be hell for you then.  I swear that I'm seeing things in match-three vision nowadays.  It's....slightly maddening.

Update!:

So, either because I am an idiot who misses things terrible, or they changed something with regards to lives during the patch, I have been referring to Treasures of Montezuma Blitz as a game you can only play once a day.  That is incorrect.  That is....quite incorrect, as the above picture shows.  Lives refill every few minutes so that in fact, you could play your five, put the Vita down, go off to make a sandwich or have a smoke or something, and come back to at least a couple more lives.  So, provided you don't have much else to do, Treasures is definitely a game you could spend the bulk of a day playing as...well, a game.  Without paying a bit, on top of it, provided you have a little patience.  I decided it would be better to include the above screen as an image, considering it's in the game, to show off how dense I can be sometimes.  Since, we all have our moments sometimes.

Treasures of Montezuma Blitz - Free....at a Price

So, this last Playstation Store Update brought several things worth of note to the store; the most pressing of them being Persona 3:  FES.  It....also brought the game pictured above known as Treasures of Montezuma Blitz which touted itself as a Free-to-Play game.  And to its credit, it certainly is free to download it and play it which does, of course, mean that it is Free-to-Play.  It successfully fulfills the parameters that it sets in advertising itself in not only that, but in announcing itself as a fast-paced puzzle game that you can play on the Vita.  All of this is, indeed, truth.  So there really shouldn't be any problem and I guess the next couple of paragraphs will be explaining how it plays and everything ri-oh, that post title isn't good.

So, while the above picture is how you can expect Treasures of Montezuma Blitz to look whilst playing it, that visage doesn't last long.  Long before the short stints the game allows (which I will elaborate on a little bit later) become truly satisfying and enjoyable, you'll undoubtedly encounter this screen which is basically a gigantic brick wall between you and some sense of elation that you can only get from playing a game.  I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this, but let me direct you to this image real quick to say two things.  First off, tangentially, look how fucking good I am at this game.  36,800 points where my next competition is 6,700 - feels good, man.  Second off, and this is the important bit, slightly above my score and to the left, you'll notice five heart outlines; as you might be able to infer, these are the 'lives' the game requires to allow you to play it.  As you might also be able to infer, to continue playing in a day past this limitation requires you to buy more lives.  With real money.  I believe the going rate is $0.99 per refill (which I also imagine refills all five lives, not just one.) which....is not cheap at all.

You see, Treasures of Montezuma Blitz can basically be explained like this:  Do you like Bejeweled but hate how the rounds seem to go on forever?  Then you'll love this game!  That does seem a little strange and intentionally so because the earlier statement of 'fast-paced' is certainly literal - matches go by really fast to say the least.  I'm sure if I bothered to time them, they would only come up as one or two minutes, thus not really allowing a lot of time for anything beyond short bursts of jewel-shifting in chunks that have to be budgeted per day.  At every point in considering that statement, I had to wonder "Why wouldn't you just....buy a Bejeweled game?" and the only reason against it is the fact that Bejeweled does not exist on the Vita yet, so of course we're just left with someone trying to profit in the meanwhile.

I can't fault them of course, nor can I say that the game is bad because it, in itself, is not.  What makes it bad is the lack of enjoyment it offers, because this freemium thing is the quickest way to suck the fun out of anything, especially when the 'free' portion of it is so lacking.  The reason why the freemium model works elsewhere, particularly in Facebook games with the variety of -ville titles and the like is because those games generally offer a lean-to-healthy amount of things to 'do' without forking over a cent.  As I said here with Montezuma, the matches seem to last a mere 1-2 minutes and, doing a little quick math, that means with the five lives you get, you're looking at somewhere between 5-10 minutes of content a day.  The way it's broken up doesn't help either since, as a Facebook might only offer somewhere around 15 minutes, it's a constant 15 minutes which makes it feel longer in some circumstances.  Montezuma's shortness leads to a sort of 'blink and you'll miss it' feel for it, and I think it really only works in its own detriment.

Am I saying that The Treasures of Montezuma Blitz is a bad game, however?  Of course not, it's a fairly by-the-numbers clone of an enjoyable game.  There are some Vita-specific things involving the touch screens in interesting, yet annoying ways (having a smoky screen, for instance, necessitates using the back screen to try and part the smoke while you look for combinations that will, in turn, lessen the cover) that take away/add to the flavor, but it's pretty much just what it looks like.  I would even go so far as to say that it probably requires a download of your own to see if it's worth those 5-10 minutes of your day for you.  What do you have to lose, after all?  I'm merely saying that it doesn't really work for me, for the reasons I've listed above.  At the very least, it might hold you over until a more capable puzzle game of this sort graces the little handheld I can't help but love.