Antimatter

Puzzle games make portables. Just look at Tetris or Lumines to see the power that puzzles pieces have to bring notoriety to emerging new handhelds. And the same can be said of iPhone where an smorgasbord of puzzlers have hit the scene. Antimatter attempts to shine in that spotlight with its own original bend, though it doesn't scale the lofty heights of the big boys.

To be fair, it only dabbles in the shallow end of the puzzle genre – complying as much to the dexterity based gameplay of touchscreen controlled titles. The best way to approach the play mechanics is by taking a look at the sub-atomic premise.

Blue cosmic strings form on the screen – rotating, stretching and bouncing slowly around the play area. You take control of a small particle of antimatter by flicking it around the screen and bouncing it into the cosmic strings. Hitting a string turns it red and once all the strings have been converted they disappear and it's on to the next level.

Hitting a string twice turns it back to blue, however, and this is the challenge at the core of Antimatter. As the levels progress, more and more strings appear and navigating the antimatter particle around them without deactivating the cosmic strings you've already hit takes careful control. There's also a timer attached to your antimatter stream, which is replenished by converting cosmic strings. Beautifully simple; despite as intricate as it sounds in description, 30 seconds of play is enough to teach you everything you need to know about Antimatter.

It's quite the beautiful game, too. The problem, however, stems from this visual splendour. Everything glows with fantastic electronic glitter to the point at which your antimatter particle is lost in a blur of coloured backgrounds and brightly glowing strings. Sitting still and waiting for the visual cacophony to subside is often the only way to figure out exactly where your avatar is, but that's not exactly conducive to completing the levels against the time limit.

The problem is accentuated as progresses further into the game. The only way to increase the difficulty is to add more and more cosmic strings to the screen. This transforms Antimatter from a game of skill to a chance-ridden attempt to guide your particle between the massive jumble of strings. The only hope in later levels is that you pick up one of the many bonus items that actually destroys strings as you touch them so you can thin out their number.

This essentially puts a cap on progress, which is a real shame considering the great time to be had on the earlier levels. Without any additional modes of play, the game not only suffers in terms of longevity, but also in not providing an alternative to this chancy main mode.

What begins as a gorgeous looking and very enjoyable dexterity puzzle quickly – too quickly – becomes a pointless chore.