Hoyle Puzzle Games (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Gord Goble
• Reviewed on: 10/24/2002
• Released on: 09/07/2002
• Originally published on GameSpot: Hoyle Puzzle Games (PC) Review

Sierra's Hoyle Puzzle Games is an inconsistent but generally enjoyable collection of word, strategy, and twitch-game conundrums designed primarily for those who enjoy single-player puzzle solving. Hoyle Puzzle Games is an entertaining interactive alternative for those times when you just don't have the extra hours or the desire for a long session with a more time-intensive game, and it's highlighted by the enclosed version of Sierra's own The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions, along with several other games you may have seen before.

Hoyle Puzzle Games differs from Sierra's three other recently released Hoyle titles in a number of ways, not the least of which is its focus on solo play. Unlike Hoyle Board Games or Hoyle Card Games, Puzzle Games does not feature the standard Hoyle gallery of AI opponents such as Harley the bear or Roswell the alien. Furthermore, although you can invite a friend or connect to the Internet for a quick multiplayer match, most of the games are best played alone. The game is also unique by virtue of its heftier system requirements, broader range of subjects, and tendency toward virtual pastimes rather than adaptations of the classic card and tabletop games in Sierra's other Hoyle products.

Certainly one of the most intriguing and welcome items in the package is the fully operational, complete version of The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions, a fun game to pass the time, if you haven't already played it. Released as a stand-alone product just one year ago, The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions is one of the latest in a series of Incredible Machine games inspired by Rube Goldberg, the celebrated cartoonist who sketched overly complex, multifaceted contraptions, often pieced together from common articles such as drainpipes and rope, that accomplished astonishingly simple tasks

Hoyle Puzzle Games itself includes gravity tiles, an intriguing hybrid of mahjong tiles and Tetris; placer racer, a simplified adaptation of the classic arcade game Break Out; and star collector, a grid-based affair in which you capture certain squares by joining multicolored objects. Time breaker is yet another variation of Break Out in which you use your keyboard and cursor keys to propel a bouncing ball toward a legion of multicolored objects. If you keep the ball moving, you'll eventually eliminate all the objects. If the ball slips past your paddle, it's game over. All the while, you're inundated with a variety of power-ups, additional balls, and even the occasional flying saucer.

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