Chime Super Deluxe PSN Review

The original Chime was released in February last year, and was totally great. It was a puzzle game that saw you frantically trying to shove various shapes onto a grid to make them form ‘quads’, or rectangles at least 3×3 squares in size. Throw in some lovely music-based hijinks, and the fact that the game only cost four quid (most of which went to charity), and you’ve got a recipe for a game that any Xbox 360 or PC owner should feel ashamed to have missed out on.

So what’s Chime Super Deluxe, then? Not a sequel, but certainly an expanded offering compared to the original. More songs and a couple of multiplayer modes have been added, but the game does cost twice as much, and you’ll get no warm glow of altruism for paying up; none of the money is going to charity, this time. Still, we’re not about to start knocking points off every game that doesn’t give away all its proceeds.

The new tracks/levels are certainly entirely welcome. As good as Chime was, its selection of songs wasn’t exactly vast. This time around there are ten songs to pick from – including the ones from the original, which is a bit cheeky, but we’ll let it slide since Super Deluxe is Chime’s PS3 debut – and they represent a range of styles that even the pickiest music snob should be able to get behind. Sadly, though, they’ve kept Moby’s god-awful ‘Ooh Yeah’. I’d actually pay money for a piece of DLC that does nothing but remove that song from the game.

The multiplayer modes are a nice addition but, sadly, offline-only. We like a bit of same-room multiplayer as much as everyone else, but lacking any online play at all is getting increasingly unacceptable these days. Online play is a pain in the balls to implement, yes. But a lot of smaller developers still seem to manage it anyway.

What doesn’t help is that, at time of writing, the game’s leaderboards don’t appear to be working. We’re told this is a problem with Sony rather than the game’s developers, but it’s an issue all the same. Frantic puzzle games like this can thrive when you’ve got a group of friends whose scores you’re forever trying to beat, and the fact that this feature is missing may hobble some people’s experience with Chime Super Deluxe considerably. Still, fingers crossed there’ll be a fix in the near future.

Chime Super Deluxe is superior to its already brilliant forebear, but a small selection of missed opportunities compels us to drop the score a little. Niggles aside though, everything that made Chime great over a year ago is still present and correct. It’s a wonderful and engaging puzzle game, and it certainly comes highly recommended for those of you who only own a PS3, or are yet to play the original for some other, less acceptable reason.

Those of you who’ve already had your fill of Chime, on the other hand, might struggle for reasons to play Super Deluxe for more than a few sessions before getting fed up and moving on. And you will still want to stab Moby in his stupid, bald head.

8 out of 10