If the notion of a better mousetrap involves a ten ton weight, a can of spray air, some tennis balls, a robot, three belts and a flaming spin wheel, then Mechanic Master might just be your kind of game. Midway's latest handheld puzzler owes a lot to Sierra's The Incredible Machine, but what this game lacks in originality it more than makes up for in execution and puzzle fun.

Aliens have attacked the Earth and are enslaving humans. As a giant disembodied hand it's up to you to build various contraptions out of offered parts to destroy the aliens one puzzle at a time. Why the game feels the need to provide a story construct is a puzzler, especially given that the story is so lame. Are you supposed to be a deity that watches over humans and can bend the environment to your divine will, or are you some sort of superhero whose power lies in the ability to draw rainbow lines and position plunger guns? The mind reels.

To thwart the alien menace you'll be given two different puzzle flavors. One type provides you with a partially constructed game board, with either aliens to destroy, humans to rescue or both, as well as a limited slate of objects. Your job is to take all of the objects, connect them to the objects already in the puzzle and take care of business. The top screen of the DS provides an exploded view of the puzzle while the bottom screen gives a smaller view, as well as your list of parts.

To complete the puzzle, simply drag parts from the workshop, place them where you want them to go and hit the Play button. Tennis balls will start moving, lighters will light bomb fuses, wheels will spin and hopefully aliens will be sent back to their own alien hell. There's a fair amount of trial and error involved, but thankfully you aren't penalized for failure, the clock just keeps on ticking. Unfortunately, sometimes the puzzle is large enough where you can't see the full breadth of your success or failure in close up on the bottom screen, however the top screen is sufficient enough to see what's going on.

The other mind benders are drawing puzzles where you are given an uncompleted board, a finite supply of ink and, if you're lucky, the ability to draw portals. Using lines for ramps and barriers and using portals to drop objects from one end of the board to another, the task is the same, kill or be killed and save humanity from enslavement. Well, kill or be killed is a bit dramatic as your life is never in danger, but still, who knows what foul tricks those aliens hide up their purple sleeves?

The puzzles have a great assortment of objects for your incredible machines ranging from plunger guns to trash collecting robots and spinning flame wheels. All of the objects are done in an aesthetic that can only be described as "simple". There's something to be said for clean, uncluttered graphics, but this is taking things a bit too far. The game does have a cutesy charm, no doubt due to the eschewing of lots of graphical touches, but at the same time, some of the models look a bit too much like they were taken form a clipart collection. The simplistic design also makes it tricky to remember which parts do what. Sure you can tap them with the stylus to read a description, but if you're looking to beat your best time, reading equals time which is money. Therefore, reading is money. Or something.

If toiling with the puzzles of others isn't your thing, you can also create your own puzzle levels and share them with friends over the handheld's wireless connections. There's a limited number of save slots for created and downloaded levels, but the number is over a hundred, so there's plenty of room. You're given all of the objects found in the main game to create your dastardly puzzles and with such a diverse bunch of tools; the only real limit is your own imagination.

Even with the games simplistic presentation it is a lot of fun to play. Seeing a hugely elaborate puzzle in front of you to then look at your toolbox which consists of a rubber band, three stickers and some harsh language lends to some "how the hell am I going to do that" types of questions, but once you start stringing things together and seeing what works, it all falls into place. The drawing puzzles are also equally rewarding, almost more so as you have even less to work with in your quest to destroy the alien scourge.

While the game certainly won't bowl you over with its presentation, that's no reason to skip it. Mechanic Master provides plenty of fun and engaging puzzles from a genre that hasn't been well represented in gaming in some time. Get your ten ton weights and scissors ready people, there's aliens afoot!

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