The best puzzle games are the classics. Some people like jigsaws. Others, Rubik's cubes. Still others combine the two and make a computer game out of it. Lazy 8 was comprised of such a group of people when this game was produced, and Cogs falls right in as one of the most perfect and addictive puzzle games I have ever played.

Cogs has the perfect level of complexity: none. Boiled down to its pure essence, the game consists entirely of playing three-dimensional slide puzzles. The pieces of these puzzles are adorned not with fragments of an image, but physical objects: cogs and pipes, most commonly. The cogs themselves have other attachments, such as small hammers used to strike bells in later stages. These gears and pipes must be manipulated to acheive a specific objective. In some cases, the player must activate a gear or wheel. In others, the mechanism must be stopped; these puzzles are particularly infuriating as the designers do all they can to keep some form of motion in the system.

Lazy 8 shows their genius with variety. The most basic stages are all about arranging a set of turning gears to activate a specific cog on one side of the block. This in itself can be a maddening exercise in futility; only the first few of these can be described as "simple." Beyond that...well, play and see. These "simple" riddles are eventually expanded beyond the second dimension, forming cubes, pyramids and more, around which the puzzles wrap. Some of the planar puzzles are themselves multidimensional, in a sense; the puzzles exists on both sides, and slides moved have objects attached to them on either face, forcing the player to solve both halves of the puzzle at the same time. This has only two endings: a scream of triumph or clumps of hair on the floor.

With the pipes is introduced another form of variety. As expected, the pipes move steam, and this steam must be used to drive a cog or fill a balloon. Lengths of pipe have to be arranged just so to achieve this. In most cases, this also requires a closed system (as with real-world pressure systems), and just to screw with you, the designers throw in open T-sections of pipe that you have to deal with; see the screenshot to the right for an example of this. You can tell they let their sadistic inner children out for a walk in the park.

Like any good puzzle game, there is more to do than just solve the puzzles. You recieve ratings based on how effective a solution you find, how quickly you find it, and how many moves you execute in the process. A bronze is worth one star, a silver two, and a gold three. These stars add up and function as a sort of currency to unlock later, more difficult challenges. These push the player to find faster, more efficient solutions to the various puzzles, providing more than enough incentive to try and try again.

In a distant last place is the sound and graphics. These features aren't nearly as important here as they might be in other games, thus why they're the last priority here. However, this is not to say the graphics are lacking; as you can see in the screenshots, the colors are bright and textures full of depth. Sound is even less pertinent; however, it more than satisfies the ears and provides plenty enough backdrop to immerse oneself in the game while you enjoy biting your lip off with frustration.