Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom

January 22,2009 - With all of the jokes over the years about Japan’s gaming landscape being full of Gundam, mahjong, and dating sim games, it seems ironic that the new download services for the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 have never really seen a Mahjong game before. As part of Creat Studios’ early takeover of the PlayStation Network, Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom gives PS3 owners their first taste of Mahjong.

Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom doesn’t technically offer mahjong, but an offshoot version called Mahjong solitaire that most people are familiar with. That is, you see an elaborate set-up of tiles and you match pairs of like tiles and remove them from the board until you have none remaining. The advantage of this digital version over the real thing is the ability to ask for hints, undo moves, and some interesting additional modes.

The “Tales” portion of the Mahjong Tales’ title refers to the Ancient Tales mode, which offers a set of nine patterns to beat with a fable that links the games together. Special themed tiles are mixed in to the bunch, which mixes things up and makes it less tedious than it could get from just a visuals point. Ancient Tales mode is quite a bit of fun and offers a quicker game than the other single-player modes can offer. This offers a good amount of entertainment even though the stories don’t really add much to the games, so unless you’re into these kinds of stories, you’re free to skip to the “action” that awaits you.

Mahjong Tales offers two other modes for when you’re alone, Motion and Infinity modes. Motion mode is almost a mix of Zuma and Mahjong as you have your normal board with tiles that move clockwise around the edge of the screen towards a fire-breathing dragon and as long as you make quick or smart moves, they will stay away from the fire and you won’t lose a life. You’re able to match tiles on the board to those around the edge along with using any of the power-ups that will appear to stop the flow of tiles, blow up a few tiles with a bomb, add a life to your number of lives, or randomly remove a certain amount of tiles from the screen. It offers a more action-packed form of Mahjong solitaire that you never really see and adds enough of a twist to the formula to feel fairly fresh. Infinity mode tries to match its name with the ability to start your own games that let you choose among the available backgrounds, tile colors, and choose from about 100 different patterns to offer a more simple and easy to set-up game to play.

What may be the least useful part of Mahjong Tales’ package is the multiplayer, mostly for reason that the developers cannot control. It’s a bit surprising to see online multiplayer in a Mahjong game, so it is no surprise that there’s really nobody online to play. A ghost town the online community may be, but the multiplayer mode is an interesting multiplayer version of the Motion mode. You have a somewhat smaller board to clear faster than your opponent as two conveyor belts going in opposite directions bring new tiles and power-ups into play that offer up a hectic experience that is fairly fun. You’d be better served to make sure you’ve got friends who want Mahjong Tales first so that you don’t have to worry about waiting around for the once in a lifetime moment that somebody else with the game decides to look for someone to play against online, too.

Mahjong Tales definitely looks the part of what you’d expect from a Mahjong game. Everything looks nice and sharp with some nice backgrounds and some nice fireworks-style special effects, though the latter can block your view of tiles if you’re worried about your finish time. The motion mode offers its own nice fire effects for tiles that get close to the dragon. It’s not going to blow you away more than a Killzone 2, but it serves its purpose. The music also does the job in complimenting the Mahjong action, though it gets to be grating after hearing the same song repeat ad nauseam, which makes the included in-game XMB custom soundtrack a useful feature to play your own music to keep the tile-matching entertaining.

As much of a surprise as it may be, Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom is definitely an enjoyable game to play when you need to take a break from all of the shooters and action games that are out there. For $10, you get three entertaining modes that offer quite a bit of content that will take you a while to get through. The multiplayer may be DOA like Calling All Cars, but that’s not really the sole reason you’d buy this game anyway. Though Mahjong Tales received a “Rent It” recommendation, that’s mainly just a formality to say that this game will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the few PS3 owners that are up for this kind of game will find some fun to be had here.

Games, News, Reviews, Media and More