Taptiles

Taptiles is like Mahjong but based around a 3D cuboid . . .

Although Taptiles is presented in exactly the same manner as Solitaire, Mahjong and Minesweeper, with multiple game modes, theme options, medals, daily challenges and leaderboards, for whatever reason it has 215G of achievements to unlock instead of whatever random number Microsoft decided upon for the other games.

This alone makes it a more substantial offering than the other three games, which offer more in the way of medals but with fewer achievements.

In a way Taptiles is like Mahjong but based around a 3D cuboid made up of individual patterned cubes that you twist and turn to help you match the cubes.

If Mahjong is about thinking ahead and a certain zen-like relaxation, Taptiles is about speed and quick reactions. Even game modes that have no time limit still have points bonuses for quick matches and most of the gameplay is centered around matching cubes as quickly as possible, which creates a slight problem for people not using a touch screen.

Given that Microsoft have brought out the Surface tablet allegedly in response to lack of imagination from OEMs in producing touch screen Windows 8 tablets, it’s perhaps not surprising that a number of the free Xbox LIVE games such as Taptiles and Wordament are really designed with a touch screen in mind. In that respect, it’s a shame when you’re struggling with your mouse on a laptop, but understandable given the nature of what Windows 8 is intended to be as an OS.

However, it does mean that some achievements will probably be unattainable unless you are using a touch screen, so achievement perfectionists should probably beware before they try this game.

The Live Tile implementation is excellent, scrolling through the different game modes displaying your best scores and displaying your progress in unlocking the achievements.

The controls can all be done with the mouse if you don’t have a touch screen, and the buttons A and D can help you spin the tiles quicker too, although left-handers will struggle a bit moving their hands across the keyboard to reach A and D instead of being able to use buttons closer to their right hand, e.g . J and L, which left-handers may find becoming a more common issue in games these days. Pah.

There are three game modes, Dash, Origins and Relaxation as well as the daily challenges. Dash requires you to complete several stages within a set time, Origins provides you multiple packs containing different and increasingly challenging set-ups, while Relaxation is basically an infinite score game.

The daily challenges simply create different objectives for your to play through, such as completing seven puzzles in a set time. It’s a nice idea and well implemented, but the difficulties involved in controlling with the mouse at any real speed means it will be a struggle to keep up so completing the daily challenges may prove something of a, umm…challenge.

Like several of the other free Xbox LIVE games on Windows 8, Taptiles is ad-supported, though uniquely it offers you time bonuses in certain game modes if you opt to watch a 30 second advert before the game begins. It remains optional but it’s an interest technique to try encourage greater interaction with advertisements and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft encourages it in other games too.

Unfortunately a detailed review, thank you so much viewers for viewing my review. It's kindly so late to submit my review. Sorry.