Considering that the main objective of "Rooms: The Main Building" is to rearrange the game world in order to help the on-screen character escape the room, is it fitting or ironic that the game's biggest problem might be its inability to get out of its own way?

Conceptually, "Rooms" is sound, if something of an odd fit for a big-screen console game. The overriding objective is to move pieces of a room around, sliding-puzzle style, in such a way that allows the character to reach the exit and head to the next room. The number of pieces increases as the story progresses, and the game occasionally introduces new items and situations to mix things up a bit, but the general gist doesn't change.

"Rooms" gives players point-and-click control over the character's movements, but the tile sliding is where the game's real action lies.

The idea of "Rooms" being little more than a string of ornate sliding puzzles -- precisely the kind of toy people invented video games to get away from -- would make it a hard sell in its $30 Nintendo DS form, to say nothing of its $30 Wii form.

But whether "Rooms" helps or hurts itself with the extra frills it piles on is legitimately arguable. Some will adore, possibly for all the wrong reasons, the story and overall design, which incorporate full-motion video animation and the kind of sound effects that would make 1993 proud. But anyone who wasn't around during the CD-ROM game heyday (or was, but wishes they hadn't been) likely won't see the story as anything but intrusive and confusingly designed for no real benefit.

Those who do, meanwhile, will find it hard to endure the 100 levels it takes to see "Rooms" to its conclusion. The high level count obviously is a must for Hudson to justify the price, but all of the items and special-level circumstances can do only so much to spice up what essentially is the same trick repeated ad nauseam.

The game's multiplayer suite engenders a similar lack of fulfillment. The battle mode, which pits two players in a race to complete the same puzzle at the same time, is fun for a while, but only so long as the basic game play holds interest in the first place.

The existence of a level design tool, meanwhile, is thoroughly puzzling. It's sufficiently robust and probably the most polished facet of the entire game, but it includes no way to share the level with other players unless they play it on your console.

Having the ability to trade more sliding puzzles online with others probably wouldn't do much to help a game whose concept runs out of steam long before the single-player supply is tapped out. But if you're going to these lengths to give players a means to create, why neuter the process by quashing the ability to share?