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I didn't get sudoku. As keen on visuals as I've become, I could look over this nine by nine grid (further divided into three by three blocks) full of numbers from one to nine, and all it brought to mind was the drudgery of junior high math class. Yet sudoku doesn't involve math at all. These digits could be replaced by letters or pictures of fruit for all it mattered. The key to this game is making sure that each block and row has one of every unique item without any duplicates. Easier said than done...
Sudoku is a mystery. You're given a grid with some numbers already filled in, and have to deduce the positions of the rest. Guessing won't get you very far, unless you're very lucky. You're going to need to put your brain to work to reduce the possibilities of which number can fit in which place until you have the puzzle licked. Dr. Soduko comes with exactly a thousand puzzles of varying difficulty, which should keep even a soduko master occupied for a while. And if you already have the skills, you can prove your mastery with the built in puzzle maker, letting you store up to ten of your own creations. The editor will check your puzzles to make sure they're correct, but doesn't tell you where you went wrong, making it something that's definitely for advanced users.
I bet you're thinking that a game based around filling in the numbers has to be awkward without a touch screen, but the controls are surprisingly quick and easy to master. Just move the pad over to the empty squares, pushing A to bring up a little number grid to make your selection from, and B to clear out a bad choice. Tapping L trigger brings you into notation mode where you can put up to four guesses per square to aid in your investigation. My only minor quibble with this is the guesses aren't automatically cleared away when you finally make your choice, and though they don't have any effect on anything, they do make the screen a little cluttered. If you're a sudoku novice like myself or just need the occasional hint, the game offers a help mode via the R trigger. Select one of the numbers and it'll draw lines on the board to make it clear where that particular digit can and can not go. While it normally won't solve the puzzle for you, it can give you the key that will allow the puzzle to unravel before your eyes.
On the presentation side of things, it couldn't get much barer. Three choices of boarders for your sudoku board, and three muszak tunes to play to, along with the option of shutting it off entirely. Though the board and numbers themselves are pleasing to the eye, and would have been better than the alienating box art of the Monty Python style cut-out of a Japanese man spitting out numbers. Though another plus is the fact that it remembers the puzzle you're currently working along, letting you pick away at a particularly difficult board in short stints while stuck on the train or at the office.
I get it now. Sudoku is the ultimate brain teaser, with varying levels of difficult for children right up to grey-haired masters to put their thinking caps to the test. Dr. Sudoku packs a thousand puzzles waiting to be solved, making it ideal for GBA user with a little time to kill, and a thirst for a challenge. |
