Block Puzzles In 3D Make For Awesome Game
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Nintendo DS | 9.50 |
| Overall | 9.50 |
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Despite being a long running series in Japan, it took twelve years since its English-language launch for the Picross series to not only be localized into English again, but to catch on. 2007’s Picross DS is still one of the best puzzle games released for the DS, featuring hours of gameplay and a lot of free downloadable content. Two years removed from the release of that game, Nintendo have tasked HAL Laboratory with a follow up – Rittai Picross (literally translated as Solid Form Puzzle) which not only is as addictive and enjoyable as the original, but makes the transition a new dimension flawlessly. If you’re not familiar with the series, the Picross games are essentially collections of nonograms; logic puzzles in which cells placed in a grid are coloured in or left blank based on numbers given on the sides of the grid. For instance, a line may feature the numbers “5, 2, 5”, which require you to fill in sets of five, two and five squares in that line, with blank spaces in between. By filling out these squares, you’ll begin to create a picture, which is the ultimate task at hand. Instead of dealing with a 2D grid, the goal in Rittai Picross is to whittle down a cube until it reaches a proper form. You do this by painting in a required number of squares, conveniently painted on the ends of squares, and destroying the ones that you don’t need. Aside from just clearing out rows and columns with just a solitary figure, some rows and columns have circles or squares around them. For instance, If a row or column of squares has a number with a circle in it, you need to split the row into two groups. If, however, a row/column has a number with a square in it, you need to split that row/column into three or more groups. The controls help the transition from 2D to 3D work flawlessly. By just moving the stylus around the screen rotates the cube, holding the up button on the D-Pad allows you to tap on blocks to get rid of them, while holding the right button on the D-Pad allows you to paint on blocks to ensure they don’t get deleted. There are also handles which allow you to zoom into the puzzle, helping to paint and delete cubes without too much of a hassle. While the controls generally work quite well, there is the odd instance of accidentally hitting blocks you didn’t mean to hit, and were not in the general vicinity of being hit. If anything, this is the only real complaint that I have with the game. The solo puzzles form the big part of the game, and unlike Picross DS, there’s much more of a goal to work towards than just unlocking animated versions of the images you painted. Clearing each puzzle forms a part of a background, which is based on just about anything, from Australia, to maths and much more. Collecting these backgrounds is addictive, but to fully complete them, you need to do just more than complete all the puzzles. Each “level” is made up of ten collections of ten puzzles, with two of these ten locked until you’ve acquired a certain number of cumulative stars in that collection. As well as that, some of these collections have fewer puzzles than normal, but feature certain rules – like having a short amount of time to complete the puzzle, or completing the puzzle without making a single mistake. One big difference compared to Picross DS is the penalty for making mistakes. In Picross DS, you could feasibly keep making mistakes way past the time limit, and while you would miss out on the bonus animation, you could keep playing for a while. That changes in Rittai Picross, where while there is a very generous time limit of an hour, making mistakes does not lessen time. Instead, you get to make a total of five mistakes. Make five, and you automatically lose the puzzle, forcing you to restart – unless you were sneaky enough to save the current state of the puzzle. Aside from the control issue, there really isn’t much bad to say about the game, though there’s the aspect of playing it in Japanese. While the game is scheduled to come out in English later in the year under the title “Picross 3D”, the only option to play it right now is in Japanese. Thankfully, you don’t need to know any the language whatsoever to play the game. All of the tutorials are shown visually, which help to explain the game some. While navigating through the menus might take some getting used to, it’s nothing some experimentation won’t hurt. After a while, you get used to all the menu functionality, which does help some. However, going through the menus to create or download puzzles or play online might require a bit more research than experimentation. Personally speaking, I haven’t really given either option much of a shot, because it’s slightly more difficult to use and get through than actually playing the game. Though the idea of creating puzzles in 3D does seem quite interesting. Visually, Rittai Picross is a simple game. It bares a lot of similarity to Namco’s Katamari Damacy in the way that the game looks. Everything naturally looks quite blocky and simple, but yet retains a level of charm that is still quite welcoming. Though the design of the mascot of the game is quite weird, if I had any personal complaints. Anyone expecting anything more than that basic should look elsewhere. Aurally, the game is practically the same. The soundtrack is quite basic, and not really all that memorable, but again, this isn’t the focus of the game. The same goes with the sound effects – they do their job to provide feedback to what you’re doing, and they work. But again, this isn’t the game where having quality sound is vital. Rittai Picross is easily one of the more addictive puzzle games out there, and easily one of the best DS games released so far this year. The transition from 2D to 3D has been handeled magnificently, and the transition loses none of the elements that made Picross DS one of the best and most addictive puzzle games on the DS. Couple that with a better laid out single-player, and you’re set for a very long time. While there are some issues with control, and most people might not dig the ‘simple’ visual and aural elements to the game, it does little to completely ruin the experience. With the game coming out in English sometime soon (no word on a local release), it’s probably not worth importing it now, but if you cannot wait, it’s easily one of the best titles released all year. |
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Posted by darthhomer Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:02:33
will also always remember this game as the game i played at the hospital while i waited for adriana to wake up from her adenoid removal operation
Explaining why I'll never touch a Picross game even though people I respect have been raving about them since the original Game Boy:
"the Picross games are essentially collections of nonograms; logic puzzles in which cells placed in a grid are coloured in or left blank based on numbers given on the sides of the grid. For instance, a line may feature the numbers “5, 2, 5”, which require you to fill in sets of five, two and five squares in that line, with blank spaces in between."