Cazallum's Profile

Picross DS

Published: Sat 24 May, 2008 | On:

I pretty much got this game so that I wouldn't feel guilty about turning my brain to mush by playing games. I can't really be bothered explaining how to play (it's well explained in the official review), but it's sorta like filling in certain squares in a grid to meet the conditions for each row & column (slightly reminiscent to Sudoku). Anyway, the menus and wotnot are very simple and easy to get around, and there's a nice little tutorial that shows you the basics. All the menus and the game are controlled using the touch screen only (I think you can hold a button to change your pen to a ''blank" square, but meh) and on large they work great. However, for some reason, be it the games or my own DS's fault, the lower squares (the botton 2 rows on a grid) are hard to press. I'll try to explain it. If you press a square dead on on the bottom row, it won't do anything. If you aim to the right of that square, it will hit the square to the right of it, so to hit the one you want, you must aim to the left of that square. Really weird. But I adapted. It might also be because I'm using a DS Lite which has a fatter stylus than the old one, or it might just be the angle at which I'm pressing it when sitting down with it in my lap.
That's probably the biggest gripe for me, which isn't much.

The online mode allows you to download new puzzles, share your own, and play random matches. I don't play random online matches frequently (first to finish 2 puzzles) though because last time I tried, I got absolutely hammered. I don't know if I'm missing some magical picross strategy, but man, I have A LOT of practice to do.