Puzzlegeddon

 This whole "puzzle combat" genre is getting mighty crowded but where Puzzle Quest, Gyromancer and Clash of Heroes surround their gameplay with the dark stereotypes of a fantasy setting, Puzzlegeddon looks towards more vibrant fare for its inspiration. Colorful and peppered with playful personalities and animations, Puzzlegeddon feels right at home alongside Puyo Puyo or Worms and its gameplay packs that same sense of frantic multiplayer madness. 
 
Because Bejeweled and AstroPop have already been given the combat treatment, Puzzlegeddon's screen full of shiny gems leans more towards PopCap's Chuzzle. At the center of the screen -- on top of stylized planets that you and up to five other players are battling over -- is a grid filled with colorful gems. Eye-pleasing as it is, the port from PC didn't scale up the grid and for those of us with bad eyes you'll find yourself inching closer and closer to see the tiny playfield. It's a shame because I found myself bleary eyed and exhausted sooner than I'd care to admit, fighting an internal struggle over my body while waging interplanetary puzzular war at my fingertips. 
 
Instead of dropping gems to match three or more in typical Bejeweled fashion, Puzzlegeddon lets you slide them up, down, left or right in real time to form epic chains and stacks of pieces. Press the X button and it clears whatever combos you've made and drops new gems onto the screen. Here's where it gets all Puzzle Quest-y. Each gem color is associated with a tri-leveled skill meter that fills as you clear the playfield. Red skills let you send one of three types of missiles towards your opponent. Blue skills augment your attacks and the grid. Green skills let you defend either by destroying an incoming missile, slowing it down, or reflecting it right back at the player who fired it. Yellow skills mess with your opponents by locking their grid movement, making it harder to spot approaching attacks, or devouring everything they send out with a pulsating wormhole. 
 
You definitely can't jump right into Puzzlegeddon and expect to finish with anything more than a lucky tie. The controls are easy enough to pick up but knowing how and when to attack, defend or bewilder your foes takes a little more explanation and practice. After you've trounced Ralph in the Tutorial and learned the basics you'll have two game modes to choose from; Deathmatch and Battle Royale which each have their own screens of modifier options. Everything from the time limit to slowly dwindling (or regenerating) health to gem behavior can be tailored for what could become high level competitive play of the hardcore Smash Bros. or Tetris kind. 
 
And Puzzlegeddon's gameplay is solid enough for that kind of dedicated fervor, the only problem is finding the competition. There's no story mode in the game, only a handful of "characters" to choose from whose unique perks you ply against A.I. bots. There is a nice single-player Challenge Mode that doles out 80 tasks like "clear specific blocks" or "clear X number of lines" and even features in the competitive mode but Puzzlegeddon is clearly built for live multiplayer. So when I can't find a single person to play against at any time of day I can't justify the purchase. Maybe it's been lost in the endless sliding Channels of the Xbox Live Marketplace and we'll all discover its charms by word of mouth in time. As the single-player, bot battler that I experienced, though, the asking price at this time is a little high for what I was able to get out of it. While we wait for the hip kids to fill the ranks on Xbox you can turn to the Steam-powered PC version for an easier-on-the-eyes presentation or sharpen your gem-busting, resource-hoarding skills with the the ultra-cheap iPhone incarnation.