A Review of Mahjongg 4 Deluxe

I found this sitting on the shelf in my local Best Buy and debated for a moment whether I needed yet another Mahjong game. I have several already. Several features compelled me to buy it. The first is that it is both Mac and PC compatible. I love it when games have cross-compatibility.

What attracted me the most was the 1,000,000 layouts that players have with this game. Other features included the layout editor. If you don't like any of the million layouts, create some of your own. You can also edit them to your liking. I also appreciated the fact that you can create your own tile sets by uploading your pictures from your computer.

Installing the game on the Mac was an easy process. Right off the bat, however, I was disappointed with the clunky graphics that were so PC-like. Also, I could not adjust the 2D puzzles to fit the screen so that I could see them better. I wound up having to change to the 3D mode. That worked better.

The games I've played so far are the Classic, Classic Bonus, Memory and Kumika. Setting up the games the way you want them (background, tiles, layout) is an easy point-and-click process. Classic is the normal Mahjong, while the bonus version has some bonus tiles that remove sets of tiles or reverse others. Memory is a game where you match up two tiles, according to your memory of their position. Kumika was an interesting game in that you have to match three tiles instead of the traditional two.

In Waterfalls, you are supposed to clear clusters of tiles. That was a fun game. Four Rivers confused me with having to clear two tiles that are connected with three lines max. That will take some getting used to, for me. I'm not sure what purpose is of the Game Variation game, only that you can edit the tiles and their layouts or pick a random set to play. I have not played the Adventure Mode or the Two-Player game yet.

The first thing I noticed, when playing these games, was that the timer does not stop running when there are no moves left. Another curious thing I noticed is that there are a lot more background images for the 2D mode than the 3D mode. I'm not sure why that is. The background music is pleasant. However, I wish there were more songs. I wound up turning the music off because of that.

For $9.99, I think this game is a steal because not only do you have nine games rolled into one but you can create your own custom games and tilesets. It works well on both the Mac and the PC.