Reviewed: October 12, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Sierra Entertainment

Developer
Sierra Entertainment

Released: September 20, 2001
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

9
8
8
10
8.9

System Requirements

Sierra has managed to keep up with the times and subsequently release a new and improved version of their various Hoyle franchises every year which brings us to this year’s release of Hoyle Puzzle Games 2003.

This latest release is packed with all of the best puzzle games including:

• Anagrams
• Crosswords (1,200 puzzles from Dell Magazine)
• Gravity Tiles
• Hangman
• Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions
• Mahjong Tiles (with Slide and Edge tile variations)
• Maze Racer
• Maze Raider
• Memory Tiles
• Placer Racer
• Solitaire Arcade
• Star Collector
• Time Breaker

Standard for all of the 2003 Hoyle releases, this game comes with the exclusive Facemaker tool that lets you create your own persona from hundreds of various facial features, clothes, and accessories. Much like a police composite system, you can overlay noses, lips, hair, eyes, until you create something that either resembles your own appearance or even some crazy character with a rainbow clown wig. The possibilities are nearly infinite. One nice feature for those of you who own more than one of the Hoyle 2003 games is that you can load your composite image into those other games and not have to create it entirely from scratch.

There are various options you can toggle to make these games as friendly as possible. A good example is the Crossword puzzle where you can choose the size and difficulty of each puzzle. There are plenty of “assist” options to help you when you get stuck; things like showing you the next move, or solving a portion of the puzzle to get you going again. Many games even have an “undo” option if you catch an immediate mistake and want to try something else.

While many of these games are fairly common, there is one game called Star Collector that I must comment on simply because it is the best of the entire collection, and in my opinion is worthy of a standalone product. In this game you place colored tiles with various symbols. Much like the classic game Ishido adjoining tiles must match colors and/or symbols. Your ultimate goal is to create paths across the star chart to capture square with stars on them. Collecting these stars completes the pattern to one of many constellations and when you solve one level you move on to a different constellation. You are only given a few tiles to place each round and if you get stuck you can reshuffle the “deck”, but your shuffles are limited. You can earn additional shuffles by completing and clearing entire rows across the map. If this sounds simple you are right. But it is also terribly addictive, and my first game lasted nearly three hours with no sense of passage of time.

One other game worth mentioning is the Incredible Machine, which actually launches a standalone program. Many of you may remember this title as it has had several predecessors that have been released as their own retail product. Even More Contraptions offers a good selection of brainteasers that will challenge your mechanical and puzzle solving abilities.

Crossword puzzles are crisp and clear with scrollable clue windows and highlighted letter blocks to indicate if you are going down or across. Mahjong features excellent backgrounds but is rather limited on the tile sets, allowing you to pick either Chinese or Egyptian symbols. The Maze games are challenging but are rather simplistic in their visual design.

Most of the games have nice little animations and special effects like starbursts or glowing tiles when you make a match. Blowing up a tile in Star Collector was my favorite effect, as it results in a colorful explosion worthy of a Star Wars movie. It is easy to see that a lot of care and attention to detail was put into this title.

Just like the visuals, there are a lot of subtle niceties that don’t stand out individually, but totally enhance the overall experience. There is even some excellent voice work in the opening narrations and instructions during the Incredible Machine game.

In addition to the 100+ page manual, the game also comes with an abridged version of the Third Revised Edition of Hoyle’s 8 Favorite Games; a substantial and useful guide that you can use in your non-computer gaming, but it has no relevance to the games in this package. This book is non-specific to the software, so regardless of which Hoyle game(s) you buy, the book will be the same.

Hoyle Puzzle Games is portable and can be installed on your laptop and played without the CD; although, certain animations and sounds that stream from the CD will not be available. As an added bonus, there are even some PDA versions of Placer Racer and Mahjong Tiles that you can download to your Palm OS and Windows CE Handhelds. Now you can master these games even when you are away from your computer.