Toxic Lab, a new puzzle game from esoteric mobile publisher Wimos, is a great find on Verizon's download deck. This game is an extremely difficult brain-twister built around a clever idea, and it's got solid production values to boot. You may have played a lot of mobile games that are similar to Toxic Lab, but not many of those can match its superb spatial riddle designs.
As you learn in Toxic Lab's nicely illustrated introduction, Professor Courage, a nerdy little brainiac with big spectacles, a shock of orange hair, and sneakers, has discovered a secret "weapons of mass destruction" lab. He's the only guy smart enough to infiltrate the mazelike lab and neutralize the weapons-making equipment and barrels of poison stored there, while dodging various types of defense systems and robotic menaces. The catch is that all of the hazardous material on a level must be vaporized with a laser beam, which generally involves clearing a path from the laser ray to the object and placing mirrors to bounce the beam around corners. You're working under a time limit, too.
This is a pretty difficult task from the very first stage, which will drop you into a fairly tough puzzle right after a short, recorded tutorial. The first order of business is to familiarize yourself with all of the different types of objects on a given level. Every level has at least one laser, which you can rotate in a counterclockwise direction to point in eight directions, for aiming purposes. You can push some lasers, while others are fixed in place. There are several types of mirrors, which are color-coded by function and can also be rotated: Red mirrors are cracked and will dissolve after being hit with the beam, while blue mirrors are good for unlimited reflections. Yellow mirrors are like blue mirrors, only stationary. Past that, there are the target generators and barrels, as well as additional equipment you can blow up for bonus points. Death-dealing traps and killer robots provide extra challenge in some levels; robots behave differently depending on their model and can also be melted down with the laser. Finally, you can pick up the occasional power-up, like a time boost.
All of this stuff is a great setup for a puzzle game, and Toxic Lab's insidious level designs use it to its fullest potential. For instance, the levels frequently have different types of walls, some of which you can push out of place, on top of others that vaporize with a laser blast. The hardest levels require you to think critically in different stages, and then arrange those stages of action in the right order; there might be multiple solutions to the level, but there's only one optimum that will net you the highest score. For example, to beat one stage, you have to use a red mirror to vaporize a block that's in the way of a blue mirror; position the blue mirror correctly and use another, stationary laser to blow up a generator's retaining wall; move the first laser to a position where you can use a yellow mirror to blow up a deathtrap; and finally array your remaining red mirrors in exactly the right configuration to bounce the laser through a twisty passageway.
That's only Level 8, and you have four minutes to beat it on normal difficulty. It took us 20 lives and about an hour to beat it, but the level design was so clever that we enjoyed the entire process; plus, not every level is that difficult. Reducing the difficulty level will slow down the killer robots and give you a little more time, but it won't make the puzzles any easier.
Toxic Lab's presentation is excellent for a puzzle game on the LG VX7000. For instance, whenever you beat a level, you're treated to a hand-drawn rendering of Prof. Courage escaping from some sort of horrible explosion. The in-game graphics are better than you'd expect, due mostly to the game's effective use of color-coding and Courage's lovable appearance. The sound is also pretty good. There's an interesting little title theme and decent laser-beam frying sound effects to highlight the tricky brainwork.
Toxic Lab may not be a good choice for the easily frustrated, and it's definitely a poor option for those who don't like visual puzzles. On the other hand, for gamers who blaze through easier puzzle fare and who are looking for a real challenge along the lines of a Chip's Challenge, Toxic Lab's good for many, many hours of head-scratching entertainment. We highly recommend it.
