Hexic HD

The latest puzzle game from Alexey Pajitnov, the Russian genius behind Tetris, Hexic HD is included free with the Xbox 360 system, not to be confused with the Xbox 360 Core system that lacks the necessary hard drive to play Hexic HD. Hence the HD.

While nothing may ever rival Tetris in terms of sheer pick-up-and-play, puzzle popularity, Hexic HD does a nice job as a more cerebral puzzler. You will spend your time rotating groups of different colored hexagons, attempting to group them together and wipe them from the board. Special blocks add points in the equation. Bombs make an appearance, and if you don't clear them in a specified number of turns, the the game is over. This makes for a tense and entertaining experience. Even the music changes to a gripping song ala "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" when a bomb drops in.

The three game modes offer great changes of pace. The marathon mode isn't timed, so you can take as long as you like to figure out your next move. Perhaps the most enjoyable mode for puzzle fans will be the timed mode, in which a 50-second timer is continually dogging you. When you hit a combo, a few seconds go back on the clock, giving you the necessary time to make more combos and finish the level. This gets pretty exciting when the bombs come into play in the later levels.

In survival mode, the pieces aren't replaced when you hit a combo. Instead, you try and clear the entire board. When there aren't any more possible combos, the remaining pieces are locked into place for the next level and you can't rotate them. The only way to take them out is to use them as part of a combo - again, a nice cerebral touch.