Action Puzzle Metal is trying to hit an interesting demographic here. They want people who really love jigsaw puzzles, but are also really into hardcore metal music. Really into metal. In fact if you kinda suck at doing puzzles (like me) then you'll end up hearing each song multiple times. Ideally this shouldn't get annoying because you're into metal music remember?
The UI for the game is quite good on an iPad. The screen is large enough that you can see the size and shape of the pieces easily, rotating them into place isn't painful. The challenge comes from each puzzle piece is a small video screen playing a cut out version of the music video. The shape of the pieces changes from level to level, the most difficult being plain square pieces.
Actually, that's probably my biggest issue with the game, those square pieces. When you get two pieces to lock together, they ding. You get a warm metallic fuzzy feeling of having lined up the pieces and making the video a bit less schitzo. Then in your zeal to finish the puzzle you drop a piece on top of part of your solved section. Poof, your solution gets stomped on and a wrong piece goes in there breaking up the pretty. All the other puzzle piece shapes do not have that issue, once a piece is locked it stays locked and will rotate as one fixed mass. The square pieces don't, and instead mock you as you race against the clock. Need to rotate a collection of pieces from one corner to another? Queue some rage, which is also appropriately metal. Failure means listening to the same song again.
At $0.99 it's not bad, but honestly it got to the point where I was playing the game on mute.
C+
A huge download (464 megs) for a game that doesn't have a whole lot of replay value. If you're really into metal, then you do get several music videos for a good price.
* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company for review.
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