"CAUTION: Do not play if sleep-deprived, prone to hallucinations, drunk or under the influence of narcotics."

Imagine a world where brightly colored cartoon robots are out to get you. But they are not chasing after you with beamy laser things - no, for this is a strange alien type world where combat takes place through the medium of dropping different colored blobs on top of one another in a set pattern, the ultimate aim being to make the colored blobs explode when they meet blobs of the same color, and somehow change into black blobs that move onto the opponent robot's screen and screw up his own blob arrangement. Imagine this world and be very afraid, for it is the setting for this game. Sanity, be damned!

It's ALIVE! Alive, I tell you!

Those colored blobs I mentioned? They have eyes, you know. Seriously. As they fall down the Tetris-style column in the location you carefully place them in, they look at you. There is fear in those eyes - fear and uncertainty, as they gaze pleadingly at you, for you are the master of their fate.

Don't smirk at me like that, I'm telling the truth! Thankyou so much for making this game detailed to the extent where the blobs you have to explode have little tiny eyes! It's hurtful to see their little eyed heads blow up when you pull off a combo. The black things that appear on the opponent's side when you do it feel like their little charred corpses, sacrificed to save you from the evil cartoon robot.

So that's one point marked in the box that says ''trippiest game ever'', and it's already swiftly followed by another. If you think the blob things are frightening, wait until you see those aforementioned robots. Some of them have teeth. It's the stuff of nightmares, ladies and gentlemen, and you'd be well-advised to avoid playing this late at night or when home alone.

Enough about the disturbing aesthetics already.

Fine, I'll move onto the game play. This is a puzzle game, loosely connected to the Sonic franchise via the tenuous and extremely occasional presence of Dr Robotnik, the omni-present Sonic bad guy and evil scientist extraordinnaire. I'm not going to talk about the story, because it's silly, and tacked on merely as an after-thought. It's not exactly vital anyway, because this is a puzzle game and has no need of stories. Actually it was quite sweet of them to think to include one, however ''sort of'' and ''a bit'' the story may be. It barely exists, to be frank, but I doubt anyone cares. Actually, I doubt anyone would notice - it's not that sort of game.

There's a machine and some robots and you have to save the world yada yada yawn. Forget about that - I know I did. The game works as a top-down gravity-utilizing format puzzle game. There are two columns on screen - one for you and one for the opponent robot. Colored blob things will fall from the top of the column, and you have to place them in such a fashion as to create combinations of identically colored blobs melded together to wreak destruction upon your opponent. If the blobs go all the way to the top of the screen without being blown up, it's game over, and the toothy robot opponent will celebrate by grinning ominously at you, like the clown in Stephen King's ''It''.

Always with the fear. Get over yourself.

I would if I had the capacity to do so, but I was so shaken by the time I completed the game that I have now permanently lost the ability to recognize when I'm being broken-record repeato-girl (please note: this is a lie).

Don't expect wonderful graphics - expect functional graphics. Lots of clear color schemes and non-fussy animation that doesn't compromise the game play. The eyes, I could have done without. Nothing wrong with the looks though. The music is irritating, repetitive and grating. Simple solution is to turn off the sound, especially if you take the glooping sound the blobs make when they meld together into consideration. Glooping? Intrigued? Every time you drop a blob, it sounds like someone threw up in your TV. Not good.

Anyway the crux of it is that the puzzle format is well-executed and extremely addictive. There are plenty of levels to go through and plenty of tactics to employ, but this is on the whole a very vacuous and shallow game. Whatever, who cares? It's fun, it looks good and it is overall an entirely good value game. It achieves what it set out to achieve without ever quite being ''spectacular'' or ''great'', but it is solid as a title nonetheless.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/03, Updated 03/13/04