Lego Bricks
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| LEGO Bricks

Lego is the greatest toy ever devised by man. Build anything – the only limitation is your imagination. Well, theoretically at least; I remember when I was a nipper, a lad who lived near me inadvertently discovered another of Lego's limitations when he tried to construct a fish tank out of the plastic bricks…

Dealing with Lego a tad more successfully than that kid and his brick fish tank, the gaming world has recently enjoyed a successful union with the Danish brand, on home consoles in particular. So it seems a logical progression to continue this trend on the mobile platforms.

Now, as soon as you clap eyes on Lego Bricks you're going to immediately think Tetris, which is warranted of course, as it is, fundamentally, a Tetris clone. But backed by the Lego licence, can this game prove to be another homage in the league of Pile Up?

In Lego Bricks you have to place at least three connecting blocks of the same colour in order to make them disappear, filling up your level metre on the right. When this is full you proceed onto the next, faster level. Sounds familiar?

Well, yes, but rather than settling with the idea of building just horizontal lines across the screen – as in the aforementioned Russian classic – Lego Bricks adds to the concept by challenging you to do it vertically as well. This means there's more for your noodle to get stuck into.

The falling bricks – made up of three randomly coloured smaller blocks – can be placed side-by-side in the traditional horizontal method or stacked on top of each other to achieve exactly same effect, only vertically. This adds some variety and freshness to the game, as you begin to create three-or-more block combinations all over the place, sometimes without even realising it! It's a good tweak to the Tetris theme.

Control is via the phone's joypad (or else the '2', '4', '6', and '8' keys – not ideal) with left and right obviously moving the block, while pressing down increases the descent of the block as you line it up to drop it into position.

Mostly the controls feel tight and competent, although 'Up' is the rotation button for the blocks and, at first, that doesn't feel very natural. Anybody who's played Tetris on the old Game Boy or more recently on the DS will often find themselves tapping at the centre button of their phone to spin the blocks – mimicking the more natural controls of the Game Boy's A and B buttons.

You do get there with practice though, and soon you'll find yourself more at ease with the control system, which, to be fair, is well suited to mobile phones. It's just that fading memories of playing Tetris will initially get in the way.

Things get a little more interesting with 'danger' icons such as ice blocks. These plummet downwards with the threat of freezing a whole horizontal line (although they slowly thaw away), in turn reducing the playing area, and so mean you have to think that little bit faster.

Similarly, there are blocks marked with horizontal or vertical icons. When placed in line with two or more of the standard blocks of the same colour, these destroy the entire row or column (depending on the icon) of bricks that they've been placed on, and can lead to a chain reaction.

If you're lucky, you might even be thrown such an icon that's ready-made in a line of same-coloured blocks. This will explode as soon as it hits home, so you must place it where it will cause the most damage to help your cause.

Lego Bricks is fairly pleasing on the eye, without pretending to be an oil painting, with clear and colourful visuals. It cracks along at a fair pace, too, and once you're into it you will soon find yourself in a comfortable Tetris-esque mental space, almost like meeting up with an old friend.

True, it's short on originality and real depth. But Lego Bricks is well-balanced, and it does possess an addictive quality and enough differences to stand apart from the old master, Tetris, making it an interesting proposition for dedicated blockheads.

Lego Bricks

A case of what you see is what you get, Lego Bricks is best used for five to ten minute bursts of boredom busting
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Chris Maddox
Chris Maddox
Liverpool fan, Chris, loves to watch the mighty Redmen play. In between matches however, he's an avid mobile games reviewer for Pocket Gamer. Chris has assured us that he only thinks about Liverpool FC a mere 80 per cent of the day.