A credit to Super Puzzle Fighter is the fact that everything is fairly intuitive and easy to figure, as you'll be able to jump in to a game right away, start playing, and never have to look at the training mode at all since the concept of the gem matching will come to you easily. And the brilliant thing is that though the basics are easy to figure out, so is the more complex moves only true champions will be able to utilize to successfully win. So why is Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix the fighting puzzle game of choice for the Xbox 360?

Unlike many puzzle games that have a solo adventure with you making as many points and combos as you can, Super Puzzle Fighter is all about using gem combos to do battle with another player. You'll want to try and get as many points as you can to give you your best possible score, but first and foremost you'll have to beat your opponent.

The mechanics are that there are four different colored gems: red, green, blue, and yellow. Falling from the top of the screen will be a group of two of these colored blocks stacked together in random patterns. You might get two red, a green and blue, two yellow, whatever combo of those main four colors you can make. The idea is to place them with like colors touching, and then using a special round gem (the usual gems are square) to issue an attack, using the power of all the like-colored gems to throw blocks of that color on your enemy. Besides the round gems to issue attacks, there are also going to be occasionally diamonds, which will eliminate all of one color, depending on which gem you touch.

To do well you'll have to figure out what's the best way to do attacks. Though you can eliminate some gems from the board by making a two gem attack, it's not going to really throw any blocks on your opponent's side, royally screwing them up until a set time limit has passed and the gems take on the property of their color and becomes usable by that player instead of mere blocking squares. You'll also slowly discover that by either making a 2x2 or 3x2 (at least) section of like-minded colored gems, the individual gems will merge into one massive gem, and if you are then able to eliminate it you'll drop even more blocks on your opponent; the best giant gem I managed to build was a 40 block combo.

In total you've got four different game modes, with a few varying requirements to eliminate blocks. Nothing huge to change from one to the other, but enough variety to make them all uniquely different. You've also got several different difficulty settings to make things either easier or harder on you; the first two settings are pretty easy with only the occasional loss on the normal difficulty, but the higher ones will definitely give you a nice challenge.

The real draw, though, is going to be the head-to-head local and online matches you'll be able to have, as it's definitely more fun to play against another player. There was a few hiccups here and there with a bit of slowdown, but nothing that really kept the matches from properly flowing and not screwing up the eventual results of the match. If you can't find anyone to play locally, head online with the game and challenge everyone.

Whether you're talking about the vibrant colors or super deformed chibi-esque Street Fighter and Darkstalker characters, the game is definitely a nice stunner considering its age and the rather limiting graphical capabilities of a gem matching puzzle game. Also, though you'll be more focused on the gems, if you can pull your eyes away long enough, you'll see some solid animation in the way of your fighters actually fighting each other. From a technical standpoint, the game also sounds great, featuring plenty of shattering gems and the grunts and groans of characters giving and taking attack blows.

Whether you are talking about its gameplay or the technical work behind the game, either way you go you're going to find a winner in the way of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. The only real fault we can find with the game – way too long of a title!

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