Honeycomb Beat review

Not since your first kiss have you felt a greater sense of accomplishment then in Honeycomb Beat, the latest mind-bending puzzler to hit your DS. This game was designed to be a tough bastard and reward you for slogging your way through with small, yet charming achievements.

Here’s how ya do it: imagine a colored hexagonal-shaped panel. Tap that panel with the stylus - an act called “beating” (we’ll pause for any masturbation jokes) - and it flips, changing the color to white. Now imagine a grid of these panels - some colored, some white - and once you “beat” a panel, it flips as well as the panels directly surrounding it. Be careful ‘cause white panels become colored and vice versa. Your goal: make every block turn white.

Oh sure, things start out fine. You’ll slowly work your way through Puzzle Mode and as you slowly grasp the concept of beating, you’ll start to fly through the first few brain teasers, slowly gaining confidence and cursing the gods whenever you get stuck. But like getting to second base with a devout Catholic on Lent, Honeycomb Beat ramps up the difficulty by introducing vector labels - specialized panels such as horizontal or diagonal panels that flip an entire row or non-vectors that only flip that specific panel. Make the puzzles easier, they do not.

Evolution Mode plays like Tetris - clear the lines as they rapidly rise and make good use of them combos. It’s more like a frantic and sadistic version of Puzzle Mode where you’re not allowed to take your time. Each session’s accompanied by a results screen that pokes fun at your intelligence level by relating it to the animal kingdom or eukaryotic cell - jellyfish, fly or mitochondria - for example. Before you throw on My Chemical Romance and wallow, the game reassures it’s all in jest.