The bombs are a threat, regardless, but you've also got three difficulty settings to choose from.

In addition to the survival mode, Hexic HD lets you play against the clock or without time restriction. Online leaderboards and unlockable achievements might well hook you for the long haul. The bombs can actually feel a little unfair sometimes-you might get unlucky and have a bomb drop nowhere near like-colored pieces-but they're there to make the game challenging, and they succeed at it. While Hexic HD has a breezy, fast feel to the gameplay for the most part, as soon as a bomb shows up, suddenly things take on a chess-style tactical edge, where you need to make every move count. Once in a while, a bomb piece drops onto the playing field, and you have a finite number of turns in which you need to rub it out by matching it with like-colored pieces, else it's game over. The board is refilled, but you need to work around the locked pieces, or better yet, try to pull them into combos to get rid of them. In the survival mode, the object is to clear the screen of as many pieces as possible, but as soon as you run out of possible moves, the remaining pieces get locked down. Some special pieces aren't there to help you, though. For example, if you manage to form a flower shape by surrounding one colored piece with pieces of another color on all sides, not only do you rack up bonus points, but you get a special piece that lets you rotate a larger number of hexagons at a time, enabling even greater scoring potential. Some advanced moves are possible, which give the game its depth. The system sounds a little weird, but it doesn't take long for the gameplay to become second nature. If you get three like-colored pieces to hook up, they disappear and the rest come tumbling down, possibly setting off a big, high-scoring chain reaction. Hexic HD is similar, except you're rotating groups of three hexagons instead of swapping pairs of squares. In Bejeweled, you match square-shaped jewels in rows or columns of three these jewels then disappear as more spill down from offscreen. You need not look far for a good puzzle game for the Xbox 360. Its crisp, simple graphics also look surprisingly good on an HDTV.

Hexic HD is more similar to the more-recent puzzle classic Bejeweled than to Pajitnov's masterpiece, and it makes for a fun and engaging way to pass the time. This attractive, easy-to-play, and addictive puzzle game was apparently designed by none other than Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of the greatest puzzle game of them all, Tetris. While you won't be getting a free copy of Perfect Dark Zero or Project Gotham Racing 3 with your purchase of a new Xbox 360 premium system, what you will get is Hexic HD, an Xbox Live Arcade puzzle game that comes preloaded onto the hard drive.

Hexic hd game save