The Mini that beats itself!
Oct 2nd, 2009 -
Sudoku has taken the world by storm -- or at least the part of the world that still solves numerical problems in the newspaper or buys those giant books of number problems for long airplane rides. Well, EA has come to the aid of Sudoku loving people everywhere with a PSP, 30MB of free space, and $4.99 to burn.Simply titled"Sudoku,"this game is part of the first wave of PSP Minis -- tiny games for Sony's portable that feature no multiplayer and are downloadable only. Packing two modes, Sudoku is for Sudoku fans who want no frills and just a bunch of numbers. You'll name one of the game's three profiles, get kicked to the main menu, and decide if you want to start a new game or jump into the title's Newspaper mode.
You are soooo smart.
Choose a new game and you'll be presented with nine 3x3 grids in a 3x3 arrangement that are partially filled in with numbers. It's your job to fill in all the blank squares. The numbers one through nine must appear in each column and row of mini-squares without doubling up, and the numbers one through nine must appear in each of the original nine smaller squares without doubling up. Wait, why would you be reading a Sudoku review if you didn't know how Sudoku worked?Anyway, choose new game and you get a new board. Work at it until you've solved it. You'll move from square to square with the D-pad or the analog nub and click X to input your number. If you have the pencil selected via the shoulder buttons, you'll plop a number down. If you have the pen selected, you'll scribble in a possible answer so that you can continue on until you've narrowed the choices down.When you finish the puzzle, all of your screw-ups, cheats, and time will be combined for a total score. See, whereas playing Sudoku in your local paper is a solitary experience testing your mental prowess, Sudoku on the PSP is a game you can totally just cheat through whenever you get stumped. Circle will undo moves, while Square will automatically fill in blank squares with all of the possible numbers, and tapping Triangle will automatically solve whatever square you're on. Tapping X on a filled-in square will highlight all of the same numbers on the board so that you can see where you need to make your next move.For me, these options make the game a bit too easy. You figure the hardcore Sudoku fans probably don't want this easy of a way out and the Sudoku noobs probably aren't super-excited about shelling out $5 for a videogame version of what they can get in the daily newspaper. On top of that, I'm borderline mentally handicapped when it comes to Sudoku, and I was fairing fine in these puzzles; I don't know how much trouble they're going to be to a true player.
No. 5 is alive!
The second mode is Newspaper. Here, you can enter by hand a Sudoku grid you've seen somewhere else and solve it yourself or have the computer solve it. That's right, you can plug in a puzzle out of the Glen Ellyn News and have the computer do it for you so that you can fill in the original and seem smart.
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