Super Mix 'em

Let's get straight down to it. Super Mix 'em is a slightly stale gaming cake with too many ingredients, not enough flavour and a moderately unpleasant aftertaste that lingers long after you've finished playing.

The above mildly obscure analogy is due to the fact that the developer of the game was seemingly trying to produce another Tetris, but somehow the resulting frustrating and oddly dull gameplay fails to engage you on any level.

The cake that is Super Mix 'em is mostly made up from too much classic Russian block puzzle and a hefty dollop of Bejeweled (where you swap the positions of different-coloured blocks in order to line up sequences of three or more). It's then sprinkled with every possible game that forces you to remove coloured blocks from the play area by lining them up, switching their positions or stopping them from reaching the top of the screen.

In fairness, this isn't a terrible game, just a boring one. The object, as you've already gathered by now, is to remove blocks of a colour to stop the pile reaching the top of the screen. The twist, though, is that you have to mix pairs of differently coloured blocks together to form new colours before they can be removed.

For example, if you mix a yellow and a red block together you get two orange ones. Mix a blue and a yellow one then you get green. Finally, red and blue blocks mixed will create two purple ones. Then, get three or more of these newly mixed blocks in a line and they're removed for good, lowering that part of the level by one block at the same time.

If there aren't two mixable colours adjacent to each other, then help is at hand, as you're also able to flip two coloured blocks so their positions are reversed. This not only helps with lining up colours horizontally, but it also makes it much easier to create larger blocks with the colours above.

If that sounds confusing then it's because it is. Initially, at least. The more you play Super Mix 'em though, the more it makes sense and the quicker your reactions become. Your instincts because tuned to looking for matching colours and blocks to switch in order to get larger combinations.

Unfortunately, it's just not enough to make you care about getting a high score or clearing a round. Even the addition of three game modes (Depth Clear, Time Attack and Endless) don't do enough to raise the interest level above 'mild boredom'. And God knows we tried.

Ultimately, in trying to make something original the developer has only succeeded in making a game that will immediately turn off the impatient and is sure to bore the majority of those with the necessary character to get to grips with the gameplay.