Picross for Nintendo DS

Alright, I brought this game last night. I had a similar game for my Gameboy, the previous game was called something with 'Mario' in the title, probably something like 'Mario Picross Puzzle Game'. Anyway, this new Picross game is actually addictive and tedious at the same time but can be fun. I love logic games and this game has a lot of 'using your noggin'.

The purpose of the game is similar to Sudoku, in which you have a grid and you have to figure out where the specific numbers from 1-9 go. they can only go in one spot in each row and column. Picross is similar to this but instead of numbers you have squares to fill in and when you complete the puzzle correctly it shows a picture of an object or animal. Acutally, the game is similar to 'Cross Sums' or the Japanese name of 'Kakuro'. In Cross Sums you have a grid set up like a crossword puzzle but instead of words you are inputting numbers into the grid. Think of Picross as kind of like a 'Paint by Numbers' game

You know what really annoys me about 'Kakuro' is that when Sudoku came out the States (uhm..I mean United States) made it seem like 'Sudoku' was some new game from Japan! It was not! That game as well as 'Kakuro' have been in different version in different countries. I remember in highschool playing 'Kakuro', which was called 'Cross Sums' when I use to play it in the logic puzzle magazines. Anyway, I am totally straying from the point.

The new Picross game is cute and fun but can be annoying. I thought that using the touch screen would be very nice feature from this game but it is not perfect. The boxes in the grid are small so when you go to touch it with the stylus you can miss the box easily and hit the wrong box. Most of the puzzles in the game are timed and so because you have to be careful about hitting the correct box you end up losing some time because you are being cautious and slow when hitting a box. The use of the control buttons is an option as well, if the stylus frustrates you to no end. All in all, out of ten I use rate it an 8/10.