If you're a casual game fan, chances are you've played something by G5 games. Most recently, G5 released its highly successful hidden object PC game Mystery of the Crystal Portal on the Playstation Network as a PSP Mini. Now they bring us their addictive spin on classic mahjongg, namely Mahjongg Artifacts.
The game's Story mode follows the adventures of an archeologist/tomb raider as he searches various exotic locales around the world for the pieces of ancient artifacts. To earn these artifact pieces, you play through individual mahjongg levels while enjoying ancient cultural settings like Greece, Babylon, Egypt, and Central America.
For anyone who hasn't played mahjongg, the game can seem stupid simple...at first. Tiles are arranged in various stacked layouts and your job is to progressively eliminate them by matching pairs of tiles containing the same symbols. What takes a while to learn is, as the game goes on and the layouts gain depth and become more outrageous, the challenge of clearing the screen of them increases exponentially.
The gameplay of Mahjongg Artifacts is unexpectedly addictive, and you'll likely want to replay layouts, just to score better and collect more achievements. The gameplay art and music too, are nicely done, with varied musical themes and tile sets that match each cultural location. Unfortunately, the story sequences in between the gameplay levels are not as well done as the rest of the game; an attempt was made to handle the narrative in a still-frame, comic-book style but due to some hasty-looking art, hard-to-read text and confusing graphic layouts, the (admittedly shallow) storyline is hindered rather than helped.
Even so, Mahjongg Artifacts is a lot of fun and offers an exceptional entertainment value, especially for its $4.99 price tag. In addition to the Story mode, the game comes with a Classic mode with 100 tile layouts, an Endless mode which lets you play well, endlessly.
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For more info: Go to the G5 Mahjongg Artifacts page or look for it in the PSP Minis section on the Playstation Network Store.
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