Crazy Machines 2 is, not surprisingly, the updated version of Crazy Machines 1 and continues the tradition of presenting hundreds of puzzles for you to solve.

The aim of the puzzles is to complete seemingly simple tasks by putting together a Heath Robinson type contraption, creating machines reminiscent of the one Caractacus Potts uses to cook his eggs in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

In story mode you will be challenged by the Professor to complete machines to fulfil primary and secondary objectives. What you have before you is a 3D wall with parts of the machine already attached and a bin with various items. Your task is to choose from those items, place them on your wall and hopefully when activated the machine should complete a simple task in an unnecessarily complex manner. Placing your cursor above an item will tell you what is, such as cogs and pipes, as the game progresses the choice of objects increases and becomes increasingly more absurd. The Professor is on hand should you need hints, but there is nothing like assembling your machine and watching it work, first time, knowing you did it without the proffered aid.

This may sound simple, but there is often more than one way to complete the task and it will take the gamer's intelligence and ingenuity to progress through the levels. Early levels can be completed quite quickly, but like any great puzzle some of the later ones will have you scratching your head for a long time.

Although the various objects range from the obvious to the downright strange they all obey real physics, so some may have to drag out of their memories what they can remember about the behaviour of liquids and gasses, information which has had little practice use since school days. For those with a more experimental moo, the game allows you to create your own original puzzles, to share.

The visuals and the audio are enough to be considered enhancements over the first game, but that was never going to be the point. Puzzles are the reason to buy this game and if you’re a puzzler, at heart, then you will love this new iteration of an old game.

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Charles Packer