Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The good news: Picross DS is a worthy follow-up to one of the best brain-teaser puzzle games I've played, Mario's Picross.The bad news: despite a host of great new features, they've actually left out a great feature of that 14-year old title and even damaged the design (though only slightly).
Picross DS keeps the same Sudoku-meets-Minesweeper gameplay of the classic game, derived from the popular paper puzzles called nonograms.You are given the number and order of colored cells in each row and column of a grid.By logical deduction and good guesswork, you must figure out which cells should be colored in and which shouldn't be.
Easy and Normal puzzles are time-limited and serve as an introduction to the game; Free Mode puzzles have no timer or warning that you've misplaced a tile.Free Mode is the bulk of the game, and a more satisfying way to play.There are a few minigames as well (a pair of "whack a square" games and a "reverse drawing" game, and possibly others), but these are rather dull and not the point.A change for the challenging: the largest puzzles here are larger than any I've played before.
In gameplay, you can either use the stylus (good for smaller puzzles, frustrating for large ones) or the d-pad and buttons (better for large puzzles, slower in competitive play).
Which brings me to one major addition: online and local wireless competitive play.You and another go head to head to finish two puzzles.I haven't put much time into this mode yet, but it doesn't intuitively seem a big draw - Picross has always been about contemplative mental exercise to me.
The next addition is more exciting: a "Daily Picross" mode, meant to test your speed at small puzzles randomly chosen.Five modes are available, only one of which is unlocked at the start.This mode has a great deal of potential and could bring some longevity to the game once it is finished.
The next major addition is one I've wanted for a long time.A puzzle editor allows you to create your own puzzles, either cell-by-cell or by automatically generating a puzzle from a free-hand sketch.I don't like the automatically-generated puzzles I've done so far, but I may get used to it.
You can share the puzzles you create via local wireless or over the internet, and download puzzles made by others.Nintendo will be releasing multiple puzzle packs that provide puzzles from previous Picross games as well.
This would all be perfect except for two changes made to the basic presentation:
- Mario's Picross had three save slots, to allow three people to use the same cartridge.This game has a single save slot - you can't really share this with a friend or a family member.Expect to buy one per person - at least it's cheap.
- More gravely, the picture you uncover by solving the puzzle is now displayed, both as a small icon on the puzzle select screen and at full size on the top screen.This hurts replayability - there's little point in replaying a puzzle if you know what it looks like.I have not completed Free Mode yet, but a full random Time Attack mode, as the earlier game had, would go a long way towards making up for this last problem.
While the former problem can be ascribed to Nintendo's desire to sell more copies of the software, the latter is simply strange.Nevertheless, the additions make this a superior title to its excellent predecessor and a downright bargain for its budget price.Highly recommended for those who like thoughtful, contemplative puzzle-solving.
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Product Description:
Fill in squares using simple hints to reveal the hidden picture. You'll need both puzzle-solving skills and creativity to earn your picture reward.
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