Crazy Machines 2

Crazy Machines 2 is at its best when a chain of levers, ramps, balls, and switches finally behaves the way the player intended. By our assessment, that is exactly why the series works: it turns puzzle-solving into hands-on tinkering, where the fun is in building a contraption and then watching it misfire until the last piece clicks. The downside is the same one all physics-puzzle games live with, because trial and error can become slow if a setup is awkward or the solution is picky. In practice it asks for patience and a taste for fiddly cause-and-effect, with plenty of restarting and small adjustments. It sits in the line of Rube Goldberg-style puzzle games, more about mechanical play than about story. Crazy Machines 2 is for people who like seeing a problem become a machine, and then a machine become a solution, one part at a time.