Hexic was a pretty cool arcade title. The main aim was to turn, left or right, groups of three hexes in order to match up three or more of the same colour and, in a similar vein to Bejeweled, keep the chains going for as long as possible. Of course, the best thing about Hexic was that most of us got it for free, as it was included on the hard drives of all premium 360 consoles.

Enter Hexic 2, which in many ways is exactly the same game, except it's had an unexplained sci-fi revamp and now features some hectic Hexic multiplayer shenanigans, as well as a couple of new tricks up its sleeve. Of course, this one isn't free, it'll set you back 800 MS points, so in some respects the game needs to really be something if you're going to shell out for the sequel.

Hexic 2 is fun, in exactly the same way that the first game was, but does it offer enough extra content? One additional tile that you get throughout the game is a little robotic arm that can swap two connecting hexes, kind of like flipping two pancakes – or if you don't want to do this you can simply blow the arm up and get some points. This is pretty cool for a while, but there never seem to be that many instances where it's actually that useful.

There are several single player modes. One of these sees you having to clear the whole board and then whatever hexes are left over actually get locked-in as new hexes fall down and fill the screen. The objective is then to try and get rid of as many locked pieces as you can. Fill up the screen with locked pieces and you're stuffed.

Multiplayer is also included, and this can be against computer AI or a friend over Live. It's an almost messy affair, however, with so much going on at once that it can get frustrating. The screen is divided into two and as you collect hexes by matching them you actually build up attacks for each colour in special tanks that are shown across the top of the screen.

At the same time, a central graphic cycles through the different attacks (linked to the face buttons) and if you happen to have a full tank of that colour, at the same time as its window is presented, you can press the corresponding button to fire an attack to your opponent. This invariably locks a heap of tiles or gives them bombs to deal with – or some similarly nasty thing. To be honest, it gets old fast, and can often feel overcomplicated. Fantastic puzzle games are usually the ones that are simple yet deep. Hexic 2 just seems to want to show off.