Joystiq

The bombs with the countdown timers really are a pain as they end your game if you don�t take care of them virtually right away (especially in Marathon and Timed modes), but they can also be used to your advantage to wipe out every other tile sharing the same color on the board at the time. Survival mode, on the other hand, seems possible to continue playing into perpetuity. Odd balance there, but at least there�s something for people who want to take their own time in determining their moves.

The game has a fairly deep level of gameplay for a puzzle game; not that it�s easy or altogether necessary to plan your cascading combos ahead of time, but the more complex moves are fairly difficult to pull off (such as actually creating a black pearl from a ring of starflowers, which were also created from rings of the same-colored tiles). The radial rotation takes some getting used to after merely swapping tiles horizontally or vertically as in the most popular games in the past. In a way, it recalls the rotation of blocks in Tetris, but a different dynamic is in play here.

Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov has been toiling away at Microsoft for years to create a new hit puzzle game to challenge the likes of his original addiction-forming puzzler, but that type of break-out success will likely elude him once again. His latest MS project, Hexic, is a fun game, once you get the hang of it, but its oddly innovative nature may pose too high of a learning curve for gamers without a drive to figure it out. After playing the different modes on every difficulty level for several hours, I can say that your appreciation of the gameplay may only grow to an adequate level after about an hour or so of acclimating yourself to its idiosyncracies, when the the direction of the different rotational buttons begins to become second nature. There may not be a puzzle mode or quest to liven your next play session, but the game does have a sort of elemental appeal if you give it a chance.

With any puzzle game where you�re swapping (or, in this case, spinning) multi-colored sets on a playing field, the inevitable comparisons will be made to genre kings like Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Puyo Puyo, and even the panel-swapping titles like Bejeweled (and Panel de Pon-derived games such as Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League/Challenge). It may not play exactly like any of its forebears, but the influences are pretty obvious in its Bejeweled-like hints when you�re stuck and its various color-clearing mechanisms. Thankfully, the gameplay is solid and free of serious defects, freeing you to ponder its exotic flavors. Just be warned that Hexic�s definitely an acquired taste.

Bottom line: the game�s fun, but it takes time to actually enjoy it. Remember to give it some time and not write it off right away if you want to sample its Zen-like goodness.

Overall Score: 8.0/10