Push-Over

The Good
It's a puzzle game that's easy to jump into. It's not ridiculously hard, and its design is intuitive, so you find yourself feeling smart when you succeed in a level. The game is also quirkily funny. It's fun to play when you feel like stimulating your brain - It's a pure video game experience that allows you to think beyond jump, shoot, kill, get.

The Bad
What's not to like? If you're not into playing puzzle games, you won't like this game. It is everything it promises. All 100 levels of it. Perhaps the graphics are a bit dated looking, but that's really because the game came out 18 years ago. Hard to believe...

The Bottom Line
It's a puzzle game where the object is to arrange the dominoes that are scattered throughout each level in such a way that one push results in all of them falling down with the finishing domino falling last. You play through 100 levels of gradually increasing difficulty, but it at no point becomes maddeningly hard. It's really a well-designed game that transcends its own time of release, like tetris. It doesn't rely on its graphics, sound, or presentation to make it worthwhile - it's like how you can play a game of chess with sticks in the sand if you wanted to.

The Good
The game is clever. The concept of setting dominos to fall down in a sequence is simple and fun, and this games takes it to another level. The different kind of domino pieces (bridger, exploder, splitter, tumbler) makes for an infinite amount of puzzles, from utterly simple to quite challenging. The ant must single-handedly move the pieces, so you also have to account for it's moving limitations, meaning some pieces cannot be moved, and you must calculate the exit route. Also, the game makes use of cartoon-like humor from the main character, the little ant. Take too long to move and it'll yawn. Walk next to the "exploder" domino and it will cover it's ears. Walk over the ledge with a piece in hands and you'll suddenly realize you've "ran out floor"...

The Bad
The infinite amount of puzzles isn't always a plus. The game tends to get a bit repetitive and sometimes boring, and it's very, very long. Changing backgrounds isn't enough to ease this problem. Also, it's not that well balanced, since you stumble upon some hard puzzles early on, and some ridiculously easy later.

The Bottom Line
If you're a Lemmings fan, or any puzzle game fan for that matter, be sure to give this one a try, since it's original all in it's own.