Review: Picross DS

Hey all, Force here holding down the fort. The rest of the guys may be out of town, but that hasn’t stopped me from playing games. If you have been a regular watcher of the show, then you know how much I hate sitting on reviews. So, for the next few days I’ll be bringing you reviews for all the games we didn’t have time to get on the show.

The first game I wanted to review this week is Picross DS, a new puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. Read on and find out if their latest game has that Nintendo magic we have all come to know and love.

The first thing we have to get out of the way is the graphics for this game. If you had told me a year ago that I would be buying a game that looks like Picross, I would have told you that you are crazy. Graphically this game looks like it was made by a four-year-old, if not a newborn baby. This game consists of simple pixels and once those pixels are put together in a certain order, they produce a picture. The final picture you make is done in animated ASCII graphics. If you were playing computer games 15 years ago, then you know what I am talking about.

The next area of this game that also takes a blast from the past is the sound. To be honest, I couldn’t really tell you what the sound is like in this game. After hearing the first few tunes, it was so bothersome that I just simply turned it off and I would listen to the TV or the radio while playing the game. The music tracks sound like they were made on a decade old midi-keyboard.

To me the sound isn’t even worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning is the gameplay. That is where a game like this truly shines and that is why a company like Nintendo continues to dominate. It is because of the simple fact that Nintendo knows what matters most, and that is gameplay. Yeah, the graphics look like they are made by an infant. Yeah, the sound sounds like it should be relegated to a cellphone ring tone, but that doesn’t stop the gameplay from being insanely addictive. When I mention a grid, think of it almost like graphing paper. You start off with a 5×5 grid, then a 10×10 grid, and I am currently solving puzzles on a 20×20 grid. The way it works is that along each side, horizontally and vertically, they give you a set of numbers. If you see a 4,3,2 in row 1, that means you will have to place a 4-piece, a 3-piece, and a 2-piece “puzzle” piece in that order in that row. Your mission is to find out what rows can you solve right away, and then use the pieces you have solved continue to solve the rest of the rows until you have finally solved each row and discovered your picture.

It starts off fairly easy with a 5×5 grid and you will be busting through these stages in no time. But let me tell you, the longer you stay with it, the more the gameplay ramps up right along with your skill level. When you first start a game a match might take you five minutes, but by the end I am constantly trying to beat the hour long clock. That’s the way a stage works, you have 1 hour to solve the puzzle and if you are unsuccessful, you then have to start from scratch. Gameplay is truly addictive in this game. I will frequently find myself spending an hour to solve a puzzle and if I fail, I am retrying almost right away. The next thing I know, I have spent almost two hours on one puzzle in the game.

For some insane reason I cannot get enough of this game. I have always been a fan of Sudoku, crosswords, and other puzzle games and this stands right up there with the best of them. I will tell you that is the game that finally got me to take Puzzle Quest out of my DS and I think that speaks volumes about this title. For those of you who like puzzles, aren’t looking for the DS to push the latest in state-of-the-art graphics, this game is made for you. Currently with a $19.99 price tag, you can’t afford to pass this title up.

Final scores:
Graphics: 3
Sound: 4
Gameplay: 9
Fun Factor: 9
Overall: 80%