Taking a break from NaNoWriMo, I decided to finish up writing my review on this little gem:
Mario's Picross, quite plainly speaking, is downright addicting, even though it’s embarrassingly simplistic and shallow. That is to say, it’s better than 99% of the original Game Boy games out there. The game involves some puzzles that vaguely resemble Sudoku with blocky pictures, with Super Mario imagery slapped everywhere imaginable. It’s a game that has a lot of charm, even though its depth doesn’t seem to match.
There’s certainly a lot of visual appeal working for it; Mario’s sprites and frames seem to suggest a breaking of the fourth wall, and he even breaks out in a sweat when there’s only two minutes left on the board. It’s stellar stuff for the Game Boy, which can only do so much on a technical level. However, the pictures are a different story: sometimes they barely resemble a vague depiction of what they’re supposed to actually depict. But then again, it’s forgivable. There’s only so much artistic value you can jam pack into a 15 by 15 grid.
The gameplay itself is a bit of a hit or miss, but it’s what essentially defines Picross. While the game is addicting, there’s not much substance to be found. Puzzles start out as mostly guesswork if you don’t use the hint system (hint: use the hint system, unless you want to memorize puzzles entirely over a period of multiple play-thoughs), but they slowly become understandable pieces of logic within themselves. It’ll take about a dozen hours to do every single puzzle, which is an incredibly satisfying length for a puzzle game on the original Game Boy.
Some of the best parts about the game, aside from the actual gameplay, are probably the tunes:
So much of the game’s personality rests on the music. It’s incredibly well done.
It’s just too bad the asking price on Nintendo’s eShop is too high. Four bucks is definitely a lot to ask for in this day and age of $0.99 iPhone games. I found it well worth it, but other people might find it a bit of a steep ticket price. Regardless, it has my recommendation, especially since Mario’s Picross pushed me to buy the contemporary DS version.
No comments:
Post a Comment