Review on Unveiling the Ultimate Puzzle Experience: Picross 3D for Nintendo DS by Demetrius Young

Picross 3D seems like the perfect little puzzle game. You are given a 3D group of blocks and must use numeric clues to knock over blocks that don't belong together. Eventually you will find a cute little object underneath you (from monkeys to helicopters to letters). Once you've found the object, you also get a nifty little animation of the object in motion and it's added to a collection for you to view later. There are loads of puzzles, loads of challenges, and loads of extra options and unlockables. This is a great game. But she is not perfect. Unlocking revolves around a system where you earn stars for each puzzle. Taking too long to solve a puzzle or making mistakes when knocking over blocks can reduce the number of stars earned. You might think this is a good way to increase the difficulty, but it's actually a little disappointing as there's more incentive to save quickly before taking risks, or just restart puzzles until you get the full ones deserve stars. This is especially frustrating as there are several puzzles with slight errors in the clues (showing there are 3 blocks in a row when it turns out there are 4) or where the clues just don't have enough information at a certain point, to make a move without guessing (there are no clues on many blocks, so sometimes you end up in a real dead end). I still highly recommend this game as well as the previous Picross game with 2D puzzles. Aside from the frustration of having to restart puzzles from time to time to increase your star count, this game has very few downsides. And in fact, I find that the most distracting part of the game is the Picasso-style mascot that dances across the top screen as you solve puzzles. This character is basically beyond description, so you have to see it for yourself. Everything else in the game is made up of cute cubes, but the mascot's face doesn't quite match the block graphic style. Why? It's these little things that don't make Picross 3D a real masterpiece.