Mahjong

It's no surprise that Apple chose Mahjong as one of its nine launch iPod games. The venerable Chinese tile-matching pursuit has become a gaming staple both on PC and on mobile phones. It's easy to grasp, but provides plenty of challenge. And, of course, its Chinese theme gives plenty of scope to show off the iPod's hi-res scheme.

iPod Mahjong certainly delivers on that score, with its luscious and varied tile sets and backgrounds. The music is quite another story though: it's clearly supposed to comprise of atmospheric Chinese tunes, but actually sounds like painfully-ponytailed session-musician muzak. Your dad will love it. You, on the other hand, will be grateful that like all iPod games, Mahjong lets you use your own tunes as the soundtrack.

In case you're not a Mahjong buff, the basic aim is to clear the board by matching and removing pairs of tiles. In order to remove a pair, they both have to have no other tiles on top of them, and at least one side 'open' (that is, no tile on their left or right).

There are three modes of play. Singleplayer is an open-ended game where you choose a board layout – there are 72 in all spread across six board themes – and play against yourself at a leisurely pace.

Pass'n'Play is a multiplayer mode for up to four players, where you each attempt the same board, and see who's fastest to complete it.

Finally, Emperor's Challenge pits your wits against the clock on each board, setting you a target to beat. Clear all 12 boards making up a theme and you'll receive a gem. These are then collected to unlock the final theme, giving you an incentive to play all the way through.

Also designed to maintain your interest is the Highlights option on the main menu, which takes you to a statistics screen where you can see how many games you've played and completed, as well as your percentage of tiles removed. There's also a Scroll Of Wisdom to peruse, which tracks your progress in the Emperor's Challenge and offers up pearls of ancient Chinese wisdom.

It's well presented enough, with thought having gone into the different game modes. But where Mahjong falls down – for much the same reasons as iPod Bejeweled – is in the control mechanism. Where you'd prefer four-way digital movement, instead you have to use the scroll wheel, which jumps between selectable tiles as they appear on the board.

In other words, if you want to match two tiles at opposite corners, you have to scroll through every other selectable tile in between, which is tedious. Admittedly, leaving out the tiles that are blocked does make the game a bit easier for beginners, but whatever your level, you'll be biting your knuckles in frustration at the unwieldy controls all too soon.

It's enough to put us off Mahjong, certainly when there's the likes of Zuma and Vortex available, whose core gameplay is ideal for the scroll wheel. EA has done well to produce a version of mahjong that looks (if not sounds) spiffing, and if you're a nutter for the game but you only ever carry an iPod, it'll do the job. But it just doesn't work well enough with the iPod's idiosyncratic controls to be a must-buy.