Call of Atlantis is the third game in the series of popular match-three puzzlers. Playrix Entertainment has game balancing down to a fine science, ensuring everything handles well and moves along at a brisk clip. Background environments from outdoor gardens to lavish armories and harbor views complete with day/night cycles and occasional thunderstorms are par for the course.

Featured songs and supporting sound effects provide a riveting blend of lilting tunes, haunting ditties and chirping crickets alike.

You will appriciate collectible power-ups -  hourglasses that add precious seconds to a slowly-dwindling meter, bombs which remove whole sections of tiles and lightning bolts that destroy all objects of a certain type.

If you haven’t experimented with the series before, now is the perfect time to have at it. And even if you have, there’s still plenty of incentive to come back. This lavishly-executed, director’s cut-type take on the old corker shows that even if you succeed once, well…Where quality gameplay is concerned, there’s no reason not to try and try again.

3, February 2009