Mahjong Titan 2.7.4

For a long while, I used to think that "Mah Jongg" (as it should be spelled appropriately) is nothing more than a Chinese game of Solitaire, albeit, unlike its European brother, one that allows some tactics and a pinch of strategy. Needless to say, I was wrong. The game is much more than that, but playing its completely different solo variant had me forget everything about Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Hearts or any other time waster that came bundled with Microsoft Windows.

It seems that my sentiment is shared with many others, as there are tons of MahJongg solitaire games out there. In this respect, what separates Mahjong Titan from the pack? Aah! The answer is everything! What surprised me about this app is that it only looks like the standard game, but its concept is very different.

You know, when playing a classic board, you'd often get stuck with no moves left, either because you made some awful decisions, or because you were dealt of one of those impossible layouts (highly unlikely). If that bothers you, then you'll be thrilled when you read this: There is no way in Hell that you can get stuck in Mahjong Titan.

The reason for that is that the tile composition in every game has only one pair of every symbol instead of two. So whenever you see two alike, you can go ahead and remove them, knowing that you will not sabotage yourself.

In this respect, the only challenge in Mahjong Titan is solving the "puzzles" in the least amount of time. In this way, you can score triple stars on every level without much effort, while the first one is guaranteed and the second one is pending you not requesting a re-shuffle or hint, which is patently absurd.

Being that once you get the hang of it and can spot the pairs easily, the only thing left to enjoy is the soothing, albeit repetitive, music track and the diverse sets of backgrounds and pieces that you can download for free. Mahjong Titan features one thousand levels, with six hundred extra levels behind a paywall. But do you really need them?

Final Thoughts

I was initially pleasantly surprised by the quality of the presentation, but once I realized that every puzzle sets you up for victory, I quickly lost interest. The only reason to play Mahjong Titan is to beat levels as fast as possible, which is hardly something that enthralls me.