Smart Games 2

The blacktop challenge "You got game?" is recast in Smart Games, a collection of more than 300 brain-busters in 20 categories, ranging from cryptograms to logic. Undertake the challenge of Car Jam, where you must steer your boxed-in car out of a jam-packed parking lot, or Slide Tiles, where you rearrange pieces to complete a picture. Smart Games' Progress feature tracks your score against each game's optimum score, and the Optimization Scoring feature lets you replay games to beat your lowest score.

To begin my little trio of puzzle and trivia games, I'm going to start with Smart Games 2. Smart Games 2 is, if you haven't yet figured out, sort of an all-in-one compendium of trivia games to test your knowledge in over 100 different categories. But these aren't the trivial categories you would normally think of. These puzzles will tickle the logical side of the brain more so than the book-smarts side, ranging from maneuvering a laser to make it bounce off mirrors and hit your target, to seeing how many different words you can form out of different pieces of existing words.

However, there are some downsides to this game. From the look of the CD case and manual, you can see that the game is designed to look appealing to smaller kids. But the puzzles inside probably aren't suitable for children less than 11 years of age. Second of all, there is no real "reward" for solving the puzzles.

All you get is a drawing of some nerdy-looking kid with a popcorn bowl on his head and the words "Completed!" And last of all, what could have really helped this game would have been multiplayer support. Maybe something like time trials to see who could solve a puzzle the fastest, or a cooperative mode where you could work together on solving a puzzle. Even Hotseat would have helped, but unfortunately the designers left out all forms of multiplayer action.

Having noted the downfalls, this game is an average puzzle game. Adults, if you're looking for something to tickle your brain and make you think logically, don't be fooled by the cartoonish look of the packaging.

This is definitely a buy for somebody who is tired of the Jeopardy-like clones that only a Harvard graduate could finish. And parents, unless your kid is a brainiac looking for the next almanac to memorize, this game probably isn't worth it to action-hungry young gamers.