Cogs for PC Reviews & Ratings by IGN

Do you remember being a kid and having sliding puzzles? I'm talking about those four by four square puzzles that would form a picture if you managed to slide the pieces into the proper arrangement. These brainteasers could be a bit of a challenge, especially because, unlike jigsaw puzzles, there was no way to reset the entire thing and start over. It could also be pretty bland, because apart from one picture or a set of numbers, there wasn't anything to keep you playing with them once you'd solved it. Lazy 8 Studios is trying to solve both of these issues with its recent release of Cogs, a steampunk-inspired puzzle game that lets you build machines, connect pipes and perform other mechanical tasks across three dimensional puzzles.



The primary thrust of Cogs lies in Inventor Mode, where you attempt to solve one of fifty different puzzles presented to you. Left-clicking on a tile slides it into an empty space, and you can actually move multiple tiles at once by clicking on the last time in a column or row. This becomes a key tactic, because as you attempt each puzzle, you'll be graded based on the amount of time it took to solve as well as the number of moves you took. Based on how you do, you can earn either a bronze, silver or gold cog, which translates into a number of stars. Collecting as many stars as possible is important, because this is the only way that you can unlock the next set of puzzles as well as the two challenge modes. These challenge modes restrict you to either 30 seconds to solve a level or 10 moves to complete your tasks. Managing to accomplish one of these tests will also add to your star count, so if you get stumped with the standard mode, you can always try to increase your "score" in this way.



Initially, puzzles start out rather easy, tasking you to arrange cogs to turn gears or cranks. However, these quickly become a bit more complicated, requiring you to use steam power and pipes to turn gears without allowing any leaks in the system, launch rocket ships, or play a series of notes. You'll also be forced to rotate certain puzzles with the right mouse button to potentially complete certain tasks, as some puzzles have at least three separate playing spaces that you'll need to work on. Once again, speed and efficiency is key to help you get as many stars as possible, but if you wind up getting stuck, the largest plus is that you can always pause or restart a puzzle at any time. You should expect to get stuck rather frequently, as the complexity of some puzzles can be a bit taxing on your spatial perception and mental faculties.



While this definitely adds to the challenge of Cogs, it also points out the largest downside for the game, which is that there isn't any assistance that you can get for the puzzles. It would be one thing if the game chose to restrict the score that you receive based on the number of hints that you asked for, or even eliminated a score if you were completely clueless, but instead, Cogs simply throws you into the deep end. On the earlier levels, trial and error will eventually get you through some of the puzzles, but on later sections, you'll probably get completely frustrated and give up. This is particularly true once you notice the spike in difficulty, which seems to increase after every five puzzles. The Challenge modes probably won't help you either, because while you gain a few extra stars here and there, the frustration at trying to master these puzzles in such a limited amount of time or moves (especially the later ones like Siege Engine or Rocketship) will make you want to throw a mouse through your monitor. Even the hardcore puzzle fanatic might find their patience strained here.



While visually simple, Cogs shows of some decent detail if you've got shadows, post filtering and frame syncing on and pump up the screen resolution to 1280 (incidentally, that's 1280x960, and it only provides two other resolution settings without any custom settings). The metallic sheen off of pipes, wheels and the puzzle board itself is quite nice, and while the textures aren't particularly striking, they don't need to be for the game. The background is bland and somewhat blurry, and while the time, moves and menu markers could use more anti-aliasing, the markers animate quite well. However, I would recommend against using the full screen option, because it blows out the details and makes the game look rather pixilated. You're also provided with two mellow tunes for background music, although it would've been nice if there was more to listen to, because they quickly get repetitive. At least the sound effects for gas escaping, gears cranking or notes being played sound good, as do the sliding effects for the puzzle tiles, but this can't overcome the limited selection of music.

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