Paul Johns

Last night I downloaded the just released SPFIITHDR from Xbox Live Arcade. It costs 800 MS points. Fortunately, I have an enormous 64 inch TV screen to play it on. Unfortunately, it’s in standard definition, so I didn’t get to bask in the glory of the HD graphics. I’m waiting for the prices to go down on them new-fangled HD TV’s.

First I played the training mode, which didn’t give any instructions on how to actually play the game, or even point you in the right direction for winning combos or strategies (as is the case in Hexic). Basically, you’re just dumped into a match against an opponent who doesn’t have any gems or crystals falling on their side, therefore posing no threat to you. Conversely, you cannot beat them, as after you pull of a combo, their area becomes clear again. This mode sucks.

Quickly after starting the training mode, I figured out the basics. You match up a bunch of like colored gems in a box-like pattern consisting of at least a 2×2 square or greater, and it makes a bigger gem. Eventually, colored bombs will drop and when you match the color of the bomb to a color of a gem, it will blow up all gems of that same color that are touching(touching diagonally doesn’t count). When that happens, it drops these annoying bricks onto your opponent’s area that impede any kind of strategy they were working on. The bigger your bomb combo (bombo?) the more of these dastardly, bastardly bricks drop on your opponent. There’s more to it than that, but them’s the basics.

So after a little training, I decided to play the ranked matches. There seemed to be alot of people online playing, but sometimes it stated it could not find an opponent for me under ‘Quick Match’ and it would ask me if I wanted to host my own game. Every time I did, I got a match right away, so I’m not sure why it couldn’t find that for me on its own. All in all, I played about twenty games, and I won one. One damned game. I guess I either completely suck at this game, or I have a very low IQ, or my soul doesn’t weigh as much as everyone else’s. I felt discouraged, angry, and demoralized, but being a glutton for punishment, I’ll probably be on there again tonight, getting my ass handed to me many times over.

Although online play is difficult (to me at least), the game has multiple modes and difficulty settings, so anyone who likes competitive puzzle games should enjoy this. It’s a nice way to pass the time when you just want to pick up a game, have some fun, then set it down without having to get too ‘involved’.