Frenzic – I’m always trying to carjack SUVs, race motorcycles, play rock music and annihilate alien lifeforms creatures with shotguns. At the moment, I have a new copy of  “Call of Duty4″ on my desk and when I find time, I’m going to “Get some,” as the U.S. Marines say when they’re rocking the heavy weapons.

However, I’ll freely admit I’m a lousy game player. The last game I actually completed from beginning to end was “Zaxxon” on the ColecoVision, so you know where I’m coming from. My daughter Leigh, who writes about videogames for a living, thinks I’m the lamest game player in the universe (real and virtual) and she’s right.

But now along comes Frenzic from Iconfactory and ARTIS for the iPhone and I think I can actually beat it. It’s a portable version of the developers’ popular Mac desktop game.

This is one of those “minutes to learn; months to master” kind of puzzle games. The object is to put what amounts to slices of pie into pie holes before you run out of time.

When you launch Frenzic for the first, second and third times, you’re given the option to register at Frenzic.com, where you can upload scores, compete for bragging rights with other players and pick up pointers. If you decline to register, the nag screen goes away.

Frenzic is a great-looking game and intuitive to learn. I pretty much figured out how to play it within a couple of minutes just by poking around. If you want some guidance, read the nicely done set of instructions that come with Frenzic.

The developers say this game makes Tetris and Bejeweled look like child’s play and that’s not far from the truth. You have to be really fast and alert. The better you do, the more power-ups you’ll get.

Frenzic is location aware, so you can compete against players near and far.

It has seven levels from Newbie to Frenzic Grandmaster. I’m still working on level one, but give me some time. Say, maybe a year or two.

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category: Puzzle