While it’s easy to head out and grab a new $50 title off of the retail shelf these days, there are some games that are tried and true and seem to stay enjoyable no matter how long they’ve been around or how much you play them. One of these in particular is the Eastern tile puzzle game known as Mahjong. For anyone who has never played Mahjong before, the object is to match tiles that sit in stacks in various patterns, trying to clear the whole screen out. It sounds easy, but here’s the trick … if the tile has another one anywhere on top of it you can’t take it, or if it is blocked on both the left and the right you can’t take it either. Ultimately, the game comes down to taking some risks and strategically trying to think ahead of yourself to avoid making mistakes since one mistake can spell the difference between a do over and success. Anyways, Mahjong has been around for a long, long time and has hit PC’s and consoles (I played the heck out of it on 3DO back in the day) in various different forms, but Big Fish games has it available with some neat new twists.

For anyone who has played Mahjong before, up front it’s not going to be anything new to you if you decide to play in classic mode. Basically, this is the standard form of play where you pick one of about 40 different layouts (or design your own unique layout which was a really, really neat idea), select your tileset from animations to characters to numbers to playing cards just to name a few, then go to town.  Now … if you’re up to challenging yourself a little more and playing something that will give your mind a little more of a workout, that’s where Big Fish has you covered.

There are two different game modes that you can select from other than the standard rules of play. The first is called “Concentration”, which is kind of best put as memory meets Mahjong and was personally my favorite mode. See, tiles in classic Mahjong can be seen at all times, but in concentration, the designs are not revealed until you select them. This of course makes it a lot more challenging to try and remember where this tile or that tile was, not to mention whether or not the one you were thinking of selecting will leave you blocked in somewhere else. The second mode that was added in is called “Scramble”, and provides for some interesting and frantic gameplay due to the fact that the tiles will continue to shift and move (and will get faster) as the game progresses. Both are not only neat new ways to play Mahjong, they are also just as addicting as the original version.

Graphically, Mahjong Towers II looks nice for what it needs to do. The animations contain things like walking people and floating astronauts to funnier things like a dog getting pestered by a fly or chasing his tail, and all of them are easy to see and distinguish from one another. The other tilesets are more stationary pictures and look good, although the card deck set was a little hard to see on my 15 inch monitor. The sound to Mahjong Towers II also did the job well, providing a little Eastern touch and ultimately just providing some relaxing music in the background so that you could concentrate on what you need to do.

Overall, Mahjong players may have a “been there done that” approach to playing it in the classic mode, but designing your own layouts in addition to being able to play different frantic and fun variations on the original proved to be a lot of fun and worth playing. If you like Mahjong or puzzle style games (if you haven’t played before), pick it up. It’s worth it.

Gameplay: 9.0
The game is easy to play and figure out, since everything is simple point and click style play so anyone can jump in and get rolling. The classic Mahjong was perfectly fine, but the added styles of play really made the whole experience since they provided some new twists to an already fun and addictive classic.

Graphics: 8.9
Animations were nicely done, and the static frames were done well also. The playing card tileset was al little hard to see on the monitor I was using, but with others to choose from this is only a minor obstacle and won’t ruin the game.

Sound: 8.7
The music that was set to the game was a unique mix of eastern style and more of a jazz tempo play. While it didn’t really stand out, in games like this that isn’t a bad thing. It does what it needs to do, which is provide some relaxing background sounds while you play.

Difficulty: Hard
Not “Hard” in a bad way, “Hard” as in challenging. Part of the fun of Mahjong is the challenge of the game, and all three game modes provide enough of a fun but not frustrating challenge to keep you coming back for more.

Concept: 8.9
Mahjong has been around for a long time, so finding new variations on it is difficult. Big Fish did a good job of just that though, by providing a good mix of fun original gameplay with some new challenge to give you a new reason to try it out all over again.

Overall: 9.0

It’s hard to give a Mahjong game a bad score since there’s really nothing to not like about it unless you just don’t like those kinds of games. The bottom line is that people familiar with it will have fun with this version of the classic, but will also have hours of new enjoyment building their own layouts and seeing how up to the challenge they really are while chasing moving tiles around or trying to figure out where the one was that they needed. If you enjoy puzzle games or Mahjong, give Mahjong Towers II a try.