Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure - Nintendo DS

Henry Hatsworth finds the story of a magical world filled with colourful jewels and plenty of money a little far-fetched but can't tear himself away from the whiff of adventure and when he finds a mysterious hat that can take years off his life, there's no stopping him. Not even if a jealous rival tries to get it away.

This game expertly combines the classic monster-bashing platform style with an intriguing puzzler to create a world of challenges and treasure that keeps you fighting for you health points through five different worlds and a few hidden levels.

On the top screen, you take Henry through each stage of the Puzzle Realm using your control pad to jump up and down levels and engage in combat. It wasn't easy to get used to using B to jump and Y to punch or draw the sword, but with the help of hints, my adventurer and I tackled new obstacles and tried to defeat all of the peculiar monsters that got in our way.

Once you have overpowered an enemy, it falls down to the bottom screen and becomes trapped in the puzzle. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to see the last of these monsters. If you're not careful, the monsters can be released from the puzzle and take away one of your lives, leaving you back at square one and slightly miffed at the surprise attack. To stop this, all you have to do it switch to the puzzle screen and swap the coloured blocks until three of the same colour come together and disappear from the screen.

In theory, this may seem to call for a little multi-tasking but it's not keeping tabs on each defeated monster that proves to be the most challenging part of the puzzler, it's trying to get rid of them before the puzzle meter runs out of power and you have to switch back to Henry.

Attacking enemies on the top screen fills the meter up to give you more time in the puzzling dimension. You can also release helpful icons to give you more health points, an extra life and other temporary advantages.

With the puzzler resembling one of those many Bejewel-like games and a platform dimension that's full of entertaining twists, this is definitely a must-have for gamers who love a challenge.