Spend more than three minutes on the Internet nowadays and you're likely to stumble across some form of web game - those bright, colourful affairs that help to pass five minutes before doing that ever so important piece of work you should have finished a week ago. I love them. In fact, it's a safe bet to say that I'm a little addicted to the bleeders. And apparently they're big business, because all the world and his dog want a slice of the market.

Console gamers are getting in on the action via the Xbox Live Arcade, which has its benefits of course; after all, who doesn't want a whole new range of small, time-consuming games to while away the hours? But it also has its drawbacks - it means you can flog all kinds of tripe and get away with it in the name of 'innovation'. What passes as entertainment on the web doesn't always cut the mustard when you have to pay for it.

This brings me to Roogoo, one such attempt at wringing money from an unsuspecting public. Roogoo is what you might call a typical puzzler in that it rips off Tetris and has all the ubiquitous trimmings; cute cartoon characters, silly environments and, of course, blocks. Lots and lots of blocks. Except they're not blocks - they're meteors. So that's different, then.

The distant planet of RooWho is under attack by MeeMoos, RooGoos who have overdosed on meteor power and become evil, emo versions of themselves. The MeeMoos are attempting to take over RooWho and devour all the meteors. Or something like that. To stop them, you must drop different shaped meteors (stars, circles, squares) into different shaped holes without letting the time run out. Quite how that defeats an evil race I don't know, but that's the premise nonetheless. And, in fact, that's the entire game. The blocks drop from the top of the screen and fall towards several circular platforms, each with different shaped holes, that must be rotated to allow the blocks to fall through safely, and once the stack of blocks you've collected is heavy enough, it falls to the very bottom and no more blocks of that type fall again. The trouble is that the first twenty or so levels are just not fast enough to give a sense of achievement at matching different coloured blocks to different coloured holes and a sense of malaise soon sets in.

Even though I've reviewed some poor games before, I've never actually been bored by any of them; yet Roogoo's slow pace and simplicity caused me to become just that. There's very little variation between the fourty-four levels besides the addition of another block type every now and again, which does eventually make the game difficult enough to pose a challenge, but not until the halfway point is reached. Different shades of each block have to be taken into account, because they can't be stacked together; when the fifth or sixth block shape appears, Roogoo finally becomes a challenge, but this isn't until the final quarter of the game! I did actually have trouble completing the final level, to be honest, and that woke me from my deep, zombie-like trance and forced me to pay attention to what was going on - if only that had happened earlier, I might have been more lenient towards Roogoo.

The game's only saving grace is its presentation. Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes aside (it's preview code, after all), the introduction looks like a cross between a graphic novel and Katamari Damacy; the hand-drawn look gives the Roos and the MeeMoos a great deal of character and the slideshow style opening sequence is more full of charm and whimsy than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This continues throughout the game; all the levels have a hand-drawn look and various Roos pop up from behind the platforms to cheer and wave, meaning that when you get bored of the gameplay at least there'll always be cute little characters to look at and bright colours to keep you awake!

I got the feeling that I had been playing a children's game, although it isn't quite clear who the target audience is - if this is the case then I can understand the seeming lack of any challenge, but children aren't stupid enough to play a game if it's boring, no matter how cute its characters or how bright its colours. The preview code didn't have multiplayer modes available, but I understand that local and online multiplayer, bonus rounds, and party game modes are going to be included, which might just make all the difference; with all those extra modes, Roogoo might end up as a good game rather than a below average one.

Roogoo attempts to create a new type of puzzle game from the ingredients of Tetris. It takes two pinches of the gameplay, adds three pinches of slick visuals and tops it all off with a hearty selection of levels, but forgets one thing; the icing of enjoyment. Roogoo just isn't fun as it stands, and while I'll reserve final judgement until I get to see the multiplayer in action, at this point the lack of challenge and dull nature of the gameplay sadly don't do the bright, colourful presentation any justice.

Previewed by John Barnes for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).