Pic Pic Review

By John Walker Published 23 October, 2008

This year's Slitherlink!

Version tested: DS

Let me tell you a romantic story. There was once a man who loved puzzle games. He bought a DS, and then played puzzle games on it for about 90 per cent of his waking life. The end.

While short, I think it's safe to say that's one of the most beautiful and moving tales of love and happiness that the world has ever known. The DS, for all its tinny sound and horribly region-locked future, is the greatest thing for puzzling chaps and chapesses since the invention of the pencil. Pick it up, run into the street, hold it above your head, and shout, "I love my DS and your laws and your twisted moralities can never keep us apart!"

Good. Now welcome to Pic Pic. You may already be very familiar with this, as it's already a year old. But like Slitherlink before it, this isn't about being fresh out the factory - it's about being a truly great puzzle game that you likely haven't heard about.

Pic Pic is, of course, originally a Japanese puzzle game (as no other country appears capable of creating a good one), but unusually has been translated and relocated for English-speaking types. (Something we still dearly wish would happen for Slitherlink). Originally called the slightly less catchy PikuPiku: Toku to E Ninaru 3-tsu no Puzzle, it's three puzzle games on one cart. And they're all great.

'Pic Pic' Screenshot 1

Drawing - the best of them all. Oddly enough, this very early coffee maker puzzle is one of the hardest.

One stands out - Drawing. But before we get to that, bear with me for the onerous task of describing a visual puzzle in words - it's never a simple matter.

All three are built around a shared theme: completing a puzzle to reveal a picture on the top screen. Maze Paint is the simplest of the three - it's solving mazes. Something you've likely not done since you were a kid. The difference here is the path taken to find the solution paints blocky lines on the corresponding top screen, which results in a cute image. These start off pretty simply, but quickly become astonishingly enormous. There's a remarkable 400 maze puzzles here, and skipping ahead to look at number 354, say, is terrifying. The bottom screen, on the most zoomed out setting, still only shows about a twelfth of the total pattern shown in full above. It's the stuff of crazed fluey nightmares, trapped in a labyrinth larger than your mind can comprehend. HELP! And yet, ooh, what a nice picture.

I'm saving Drawing for last, so next is Magipic. Here you have a grey grid, with numbers in about half the squares. The idea is to paint the corresponding number of tiles black to which each number is adjacent. Um, bear with me. So, if there's a 9 on the grid, then the square itself and all those immediately surrounding go black. A 6 touching the edge of the screen is going to receive the same. A 6 in the middle of the screen is obviously not immediately solvable. A 0, meanwhile, is filled in with surrounding whites. So you start by filling in all the 9s and 0s, and then the rest becomes more obvious. A 6 alongside the surrounding whites of 0 can now have its remaining squares filled in black, etc.

For the first few hundred (it's odd to write that) these are quite elementary, only more challenging by their sheer size. Finding that one next move is the aim, which then satisfyingly reveals a stream of new moves. Toward the end, it does slightly disappointingly seem to leave small areas where you're forced to make informed guesses, which seems against the spirit of the thing. But frankly, there's so bloody many - 400 again - you won't mind.

Last, and least least, is Drawing, the deceptively plain name for a completely joyful puzzle - the puzzle that, were Pic Pic to include it alone, would earn the game a 10. It's important to understand this - as many criticisms of Maze Paint or Magipic as I may find to put below, Drawing seals the deal. Everything else is icing.

To communicate how much I love Drawing, let me explain this: there are once more 400 puzzles. I've completed them all twice. Later ones take around 20 minutes to finish. Which if I type into this calculator tells me... I've played this game a lot.

Here you once more have a grid of tiles, again with numbers scattered liberally about them. There's two types, black and white, and colour. We'll start with the former, as they do. Each number has a partner. You have to connect those numbers up, with the number of connecting blocks corresponding to that number. So things begin relatively simply. A 1 is obviously just painted black on its own. 2s are mostly very clear. They're next to each other, and while complicated if grouped together, are obvious enough. 3s get a bit more tricky, as they might be a straight line, or make a right angle. And from then on, it becomes much more tricky. The sight of a 20 on either side of the grid can be daunting. But the pleasure here is, there's never a moment of ludicrous guessing. Like Slitherlink, there's always a correct next move, and it's always enormously rewarding to find it.

'Pic Pic' Screenshot 2

Magipic involves the most hunting. Sorry the pics are in Japanese. 505 didn't exactly promote this game.

But what elevates Drawing above the shoulders of so many entertainingly complex puzzles is the way it so quickly becomes intuitive. You develop instincts so strong that they shift to the right brain, meaning filling in the puzzle can often feel (I'm going to lose so many people here) poetic.

The controls are completely perfect, requiring nothing other than a tap or glide, with no switching back and forth between options (this is one of Magipic's few frustrations - the constant switching between black and white, which can't be assigned to a left-handed button). So faced with a giant screen of numbered tiles, you immediately flick and swoosh your way through the obvious 1s, 2s and 3s, which reveal possible pathways for the higher figures. But here's the most important thing - you can never, ever have an alternative solution. So if you see you're left with two possible routes for a connection to take, and nothing else that's going to change that, you've made a mistake. It's a peculiarly backward thinking - more possibility means an error. And as such, you can apply this rule ahead of time, realising which path you must pick for one string, such that it won't leave variables for those nearby.

Again, as with the other two, you end up creating a picture on the top screen. The further you get, the larger the grids, and the more complex this picture can be. By puzzles 200 to 400, you're often creating some really rather fantastic images, incomparable with the blocky blobs of the first few. Epic sunset scenes, waterfalls, sporting events. Puzzle 259 is a stream running through a forest. 314 is the MI6 Building in London. My absolute favourite is 371 - a gorgeously lit (no, seriously) pixel picture of a rabbit in the early evening, by some reeds.

Every so often the game switches from black and white to colour puzzles, with - I think - about two thirds ending up colour. Colour is only slightly different - with these you need to match the number and the colour. So a brown 4 connects to another brown 4, perhaps inside a red 12. This has the effect of simplifying the puzzles slightly - there's far fewer uncertainties when so many are clearly not ever going to connect - but increases the fun. The picture you build is that bit more entertaining to watch build up above, and by the time the grids are utterly vast, the black and whites can be unnerving.

It is just such a perfectly formulated, perfectly executed puzzle. It's distinct from anything in the wonderful Hudson Soft Puzzle collection, but as smartly and intuitively designed. In fact, it's in many ways better than the Hudson games, and not just because it's all in English. (It's so great to be able to turn the music off without having to attend evening classes). The control set-ups for each puzzle are astonishing, letting you reassign every button on the machine to some obscure flourish. (Except for letting you change between black and white in Magipic, madly!).

'Pic Pic' Screenshot 3

Maze Paint starts off incredibly simply. But soon they take up more space than Hampton Court's.

The only way in which it falls short of a Hudson title is the lack of a reward system for timely completion. While the omission doesn't hurt the game at all, it would have added another layer. Beating your previous time, and thus earning extra stars, is an excellent incentive for repeat play. However, in a puzzle game with 1200 superb puzzles, demanding that is perhaps a little excessive. And speaking as someone who's played 800 Drawing puzzles, it certainly didn't cause me to want to carry on any less.

So what you have here is a puzzle as inspired and delightful as Slitherlink, and in a game as neatly executed as Hudson's classic. Then either side of it are two other puzzle games, the slightly less interesting Maze Paint, and the slightly more fiddly Magipic, like lovely bridesmaids either side of the gorgeous bride. I told you this was romantic.

I have other things to celebrate about it, but I should probably stop. But let me mention the mad naming of some of the puzzles. They're not named until you've completed them, to ensure it's not spoilt. My favourite. A fox, with a golf club by a flaghole, with two foxes watching on in the background. The title? "Golf". Wonderful.

Confuse your local game store by making them order it in. Confuse 505 Games by having their eight-month-old game suddenly chart. (It's not in stock everywhere, but most places have "used and new" copies). Hell, if it's hard to find, we'll all force them to reissue it. It was released for Italy only this month, so we know they're still taking notice of it.

10 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of John.

About John Walker

Read more articles from John by visiting the John Walker archive page.

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Comments (85) 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Inigo #1 3 years ago

    I bought Slitherlink and really enjoyed it so i will definitely get this one.

  • Evolution #2 3 years ago

    Region locked?...

  • Razz #3 3 years ago

    WOW! I had no idea about this game. Now I want it more than anything!

  • illusiondance #4 3 years ago

    so its quite good then?
    i always marvel at the folk who invent new puzzle games. (not including tetris 'inspired' bhollocks)

  • the_dudefather #5 3 years ago

    better than Saints row 2?

  • rayk2099 #6 3 years ago

    I've had this for ages - only ever really play Drawing though. Agree about puzzle 371 with the rabbit.

    Totally worth a purchase - this game will keep you busy for many many hours.

  • penhalion #7 3 years ago

    Are EG trying to see how many 10/10s they can issue before people call bollocks!

  • peterfll #8 3 years ago

    When I saw the tagline "This years Slitherlink" my heart sank as the EG team have only just stopped putting references to Slitherlink in their reviews and articles.

  • morriss #9 3 years ago

    Looks rubbish

  • siro #10 3 years ago

    Oh my, is it really that good? Slitherlink sure was awesome...

  • Santino #11 3 years ago

    nice! only the other day i was wondering what i was going to do with myself as i approach the last few puzzles of slitherlink and now i have the answer! i thought i would be without a ds puzzle game until 3d picross.

  • ChrisS #12 3 years ago

    I like to think of Slitherlink as the old Pic Pic. And yeah, it's wonderful, and so is John Walker.

    Lovely stuff.

  • Benno #13 3 years ago

    Looks rubbish

  • Benno #14 3 years ago

    snap morriss!

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #15 3 years ago

    Walker's completely lost it this time. Much as I normally agree with him on puzzle games, Pic Pic is total rubbish. Magicpic is a guessing game, Maze Paint is for babies, and Drawing is almost as juvenile as its title. This one's worth 4/10 at best.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #16 3 years ago

    PS I am lying.

  • jaxon58 #17 3 years ago

    It's good but it's never a 10!

    There's about 500 puzzles and it gets rock hard after about 50.

    Or I'm rubbish.

  • kinky_mong #18 3 years ago

    I finished Picross DS a couple of weeks ago and was wondering if there any other puzzle games I might like to stop the DS being forever consigned to it's box in the cupboard. I think this is the answer.

    i thought i would be without a ds puzzle game until 3d picross

    There's a 3D Picross coming?!

  • pikemon #19 3 years ago

    Read 5 first paragraphs, looked at the screenshot, checked out the score and ordered from play.com at 24 euros. Fast and efficient!

  • Fodder #20 3 years ago

    I still prefer Nurikabe to either this or Slitherlink, but Pic Pic is still absolutely brilliant. Well, other than the maze mode, obviously.

  • Tiger_Walts #21 3 years ago

    If you liked Picross then you should get Hudonsoft's Illust. It's a far better product, the there are more/better puzzles and the interface is better.

  • wellsie #22 3 years ago

    £16.99 on play.com btw

  • Kon #23 3 years ago

    Curses! I saw the headline on this and I immediately felt my heart sink. There are far too many great games coming out and far too little time and money to get and play all of them.

    Well, Slither is still one of my favorite puzzlers and I have Mr. Walker to thank for that so I guess its time to hit up Play.com again...

  • X201 #24 3 years ago

    26 comments and not a single BTH

    Standards are dropping

  • UltimateWarrior #25 3 years ago

    This is why Eurogamer stands head and shoulders above the rest. It has writers like John who champion unsung heroes and understand that games don't have to have massive budgets to brighten your life and be deserving of a high score.

  • HiddenAway #26 3 years ago

    Damn you. I only had a single game to buy over the next 2 weeks but you ruined it :p. Bought on impulse because I liked the demo for Picross and have never tried these puzzles before (and because it's 505 Gameslol)

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #27 3 years ago

    Better than LittleBi-

    BANG!

    \dies

  • kincaide #28 3 years ago

    Play have it in stock:

    [link url=http://www.play.com/Games/DS/4-/3434255/Pic-Pic/Prod uct.html
    ]http://ww w.play.com/Games/DS/4-/3434255/...[/link]

    £16.99 Free Delivery
    RRP: £19.99 | You save: £3.00 (15%)

    In stock | Usually dispatched within 24 hours

  • geord1o #29 3 years ago

    Bah, Game have it listed for a tenner but out of stock :(

  • PameBoy #30 3 years ago

    10?! Fuck! Are you serious? I mean, I'm sure it's great but giving it a 10 implies that anybody, regardless of whether they normally have any interest in this type of game or not, will be blown away by it. Shit, maybe I'll check it out.

  • dryden555 #31 3 years ago

    personally I wasnt able to get into this -- too much guessing rather than skill

  • UltimateWarrior #32 3 years ago

    The first paragrpah of this review is so true. If Mr Walker was a woman I'd probably marry him. The thought of ever having to live without my DS and my puzzle collection is so terrifying that I recently bought a second DS just to have as a back up. Long journeys and boring visits to relatives are never a chore with a DS in your pocket. Although it can be enmbarassing explaining to your grand parents why you just spent an hour in the toilet instead of looking at their photo collection! It's my most favourite thing in the whole world and I can happily see myself growing old with it.

  • jonsaan #33 3 years ago

    Please don't hang me but I really didn't find picross DS to be all that. Good and functional yes, but entirely without soul.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #34 3 years ago

    Those games are fantastic and eat up a lot of my time. Picross is awesome, Slitherlink was awesome and I still haven't touched Nurikabe yet even though I bought it ages ago. Good stuff, will definitely get this one.

  • Kiigan #35 3 years ago

    It's out of stock everywhere. So, fuck it.

  • Eraysor #36 3 years ago

    Sold, sold a thousand times sold. I have lost a massive amount of time to Picross and I now look set to lose a lot more.

  • dr_faulk #37 3 years ago

    " ...and then the rest becomes more obvious. A 6 alongside the surrounding whites of 0 can now have its remaining squares filled in black, etc."

    Jesus.... what?

  • Kiigan #38 3 years ago

    Also - there have been plenty of great puzzle games created outside of Japan. Let's not get silly in our enthusiasm.

  • dr_faulk #39 3 years ago

    "So a brown 4 connects to another brown 4, perhaps inside a red 12. "

    No, really.... what?

  • Lawlost #40 3 years ago

    what, stuff the game, I'm sure it is as wonderful as John says. What is this about region locking the DS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #41 3 years ago

    Also - there have been plenty of great puzzle games created outside of Japan.

    Pshaw! The only one I can even think of was that Denki Blocks, and it was rubbish...

    ;)

  • Physically_Insane #42 3 years ago

    @the_dudefather

    You've done that joke in every review thread. It wasn't even funny the first time!

  • HiddenAway #43 3 years ago

    Err, DS games have and will always be region-free.

    DSi games will be region-locked but there's no games that are specific for the DSi yet!

  • Santino #44 3 years ago

    i'm sure the DSi region locking only applies to the downloadable DSi games, which was pretty obvious really judging by the fact that the shopping channel on the Wii is region locked.
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/08 @ 14:06

  • botherer #45 3 years ago

    dryden555 - I promise you're playing it wrong. There's no guessing necessary in any of the 400 Drawing games, and only very occasionally in the Magipic games, and I'm still not convinced that this isn't just me messing up.

    jaxon58 - the same. It never gets too hard. Only larger.

    jonsaan - I maintain that Picross DS is disappointing, but we're in a tiny minority. You're right that it feels souless and pharmaceutical, especially when compared with Illust, or any of the Mario Picross games from machines ancient. And scrolling puzzles... makes me mad!

    Tiger_Walts - I adore Hudson's Illust & Color Logic, and recommend it as much as Pic Pic. In fact, as it happens, I've started it all over again last week and am playing it in all my spare moments once more. Having completed every puzzle on my first play through.

    Kiigan - name them.

    As for region locking, that's the DSi that's not out yet. You can all relax.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #46 3 years ago

    Also - there have been plenty of great puzzle games created outside of Japan.

    Clearly this isn't even slightly true. Westerners, for some bizarre reason I don't understand, can't make puzzle games for shit.

  • samaran #47 3 years ago

    i guess tetris doesn't count?

  • botherer #48 3 years ago

    If you need to go back 23 years to think of an example, it does rather re-enforce the point : )

  • Murbal #49 3 years ago

    NNNNNNNnooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven't even finished Picross yet :-(
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/08 @ 15:02

  • Kiigan #50 3 years ago

    Well it depends on how narrowly you define "puzzle game" really doesn't it?

    I'd consider Lemmings a puzzle game. Or World of Goo. Or Portal. Or Denki Blocks :) Certainly they aren't the same types of puzzles as Slitherlink or Picross but western developers are clearly fundamentally capable of creating puzzles. The bigger issue is the fact that the market is less open to puzzle games here, with the DS software lineup being a prime example.

    If puzzle games sold better here, perhaps western developers would be making more of them.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #51 3 years ago

    i guess tetris doesn't count?

    I'm fairly sure Russia isn't in the West...

    And obviously, Tetris isn't a "puzzle game" in anything like remotely the same sense that Pic-Pic or Picross or Slitherlink are. Though Portal is a pretty fair example. As for puzzle games not selling well, it's hard to make a fair judgement since we've never had most of the good ones released here, and when they are they're ignored by the media in favour of 16 pages on Bald Space Marine Shooter 12. But Brain Training probably belongs more in the puzzle-game category than any other genre, and it's sold by the tankerload.

  • Bremenacht #52 3 years ago

    Less than £16 @ TheHut.

  • darc #53 3 years ago

    Great review. I absolutely have to find this game for my wife. Any idea whether it's available in the U.S.? Amazon doesn't have it - and their search autofill indicates that people are looking for it. I think this is going to take some creativity...
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/08 @ 15:51

  • samaran #54 3 years ago

    @ stuart campbell I'm fairly sure Russia isn't in the West...

    evidently you didn't watch euro 2008.

    ...or the eurovision song contest.

  • Krelle #55 3 years ago

    I count Russia as a part of Europe. Incorrect or not, Ive always thought of it as "part of the west".

  • secombe #56 3 years ago

    I've seen this game many times in stores, and having never seen any reviews assumed it was probably another rubbish cheap puzzle compilation. Now I desperately want it and can't find it anywhere!

  • floppylobster #57 3 years ago

    I bought this months ago, and have been playing it for months ever since because there are so many pictures to do. It probably deserves about a 9, but only because the majority of pictures are really shit. Some of them are so bad they're actually quite funny. In fact, in reviewing the pictures I had created with my girlfriend (who is also addicted) I couldn't stop laughing at how shit some were. So maybe it does deserve a 10 after all.

    If a company like Nintendo or Capcom would pick up this concept and create some interesting art, this game would be an 11.
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/08 @ 23:08

  • Caer #58 3 years ago

    So true about the coffee machine one. Took me 15 minutes to do that, 10 of which were poking around trying to connect the last four 9s (middle bottom).

  • TheRealBadabing #59 3 years ago

    Picked this up for a tenner the other week on a whim. Really surprised to see the review but absolutely agree with the score.

    Piccross and Polarium were great fun but got stupidly hard. This is just a nice game; challenging enough without ever getting to the point of giving up because of an overly daunting puzzle.

    Perfect morning shitter material.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #60 3 years ago

    Denki Blocks is as good a puzzle games as any of these

    It really, really, REALLY isn't.

  • rogueJT #61 3 years ago

    I have this.

    Just two on eBay right now.

    http://sh op.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksi...

    edit: "the early coffee maker is one of the hardest"

    I just played the first three puzzles on drawing (coffee maker being the second) and found them quite easy.

    Maybe I'm a Pic Pic natural.
    Only 397 to got then.
    Edited by 3 at 24/10/08 @ 13:34

  • Kon #62 3 years ago

    @remowilliamsuk

    The score 10 Nazi strikes again.

    Ever consider that maybe the reviewer doesn't see the games in exactly the same light as you? Perhaps since you've put so many hours into these games you would care to enlighten us with a proper analysis as to why they are undeserving of the score they got.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #63 3 years ago

    This review is way too subjective.
    All this stuff about poetry and the name of the complicated puzzle being "brilliantly" just Golf. That's your opinion.

    Surely these reviews have to take into account the majority - because this review just reads like a dedicated fanboy post, not a review from a trustworthy balanced publication/website.

    Goodness me, what a gargantuan pile of ill-considered shite.

    Firstly, ALL reviewing is subjective. It's not possible to second-guess what 100,000 members of the public will like, so all any reviewer can do is give an honest subjective view.

    However, in as much as any genuine aspects of videogaming are objectively measurable, it's possible to count the number of hours of play contained in a game before you start pointlessly repeating yourself, and in that regard Pic-Pic comprehensively PISSES ALL OVER ALMOST ANY GAME RELEASED THIS YEAR, you dimwit.

    To finish every puzzle in it just once would take roughly, by my estimation, a MINIMUM of five or six HUNDRED hours of play, all of them highly enjoyable. Compare that to any shitty Bald Space Marine FPS or Tomb Raider sequel that's done and dusted in six hours, or even some agonisingly dull JRPG padded out to 100 hours with 20% cutscenes, 70% grinding and 10% actual game, and even a total dolt can see that Pic-Pic represents the most spectacular value for money that £20 spent on a videogame could ever buy. In as much as there's anything objective about game reviewing, that fact alone practically justifies a 10 by itself.

    Now piss off.

  • botherer #64 3 years ago

    remo william suk - It turns out that I am a person, and not a tedious machine that describes the technical aspects of a game. An interesting thing about other people is that they are a person too, and when they play a game, they won't react to it like a robot, printing an analysis of it out of their mouths before plugging themselves into bed. They will have emotional responses too. By sharing my emotional response to a game, I create a human story, and thus portray the possibilities of the game's potential.

    But what makes your argument so blisteringly ridiculous is that my review does EXACTLY what you so rudely demand, but with subjective comment as well. You have learned from my describing the wonderfully funny foxes playing golf picture that one of the puzzles is a picture of a fox playing golf. That is a cold hard fact for you to write in your Giant Book Of Information, and you can ignore the bit where I said it made me laugh. Evil human laughter - your special Giant Book Of Information shall have no space for such disgusting frivolities!

    Regarding your final incredibly rudely stated comment: In my ten year career as a games journalist, I have given TWO games a 10, ever. TWO. It is in no way a score I "throw around". It could just possibly be that this game merits a 10.

    But thank you for your unpleasant response to my cheerful and celebratory review.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #65 3 years ago

    How could we ever have guessed you were an Edge reader..?

    Whether a game is "obscure" or not has no bearing whatsoever on how good it is. The fact that you haven't heard of it before doesn't make it any less likely to be worth a 10. There was a day when nobody had heard of Halo or Grand Theft Auto. Pic-Pic got a 10 because it's utterly brilliant. Your ridiculous, pompous, impossible notions of "objectivity" don't change that fact one iota.

    10% of all games should score 10/10 (or 9% if you allow scores of zero). If anything, EG still massively under-uses it.

    And if you don't want to be insulted, don't be an arsehole. You were first with the insult, claiming that the reviewer awarded the mark "just to appear different", which is a massively offensive slight on a highly professional writer who uses the score incredibly sparingly. It's not any less rude just because you didn't say "fuck". So fuck you.

  • Kon #66 3 years ago

    ^ 0_o

    Dayumn Rev., that was just as rude as it was awesome.

  • rogueJT #67 3 years ago

    only 8 done on drawing. This is gonna take me a while.

    Had a quick blast on maze but can't see me going back.

    Yet to try the other one "Magilink" I think it's called or summat?

    So far it's a solid 8/10.

    It's quite easy so far so I'll report back when I'm about level 100.

    The "drawing" the picture is completely irrelevant to the gameplay as you pay no attention whatsoever to the picture as it is being drawn. It's more like picross in that you are rewarded with a picture when you complete the stage but it will only become vaguely clear at the very end - the fact that you might know it's a Hippo will give you no clues whatsoever in finishing solving the puzzle.

    Or at least that's just me, maybe others might see it differently.
    Edited by 2 at 24/10/08 @ 16:50

  • deluxeeditionjm #68 3 years ago

    This game is pretty sweet!

    Is there a way to "erase" or "undo" a move in the drawing mode? I hate having to restart the puzzle every time I make a small mistake.

  • Stoatboy #69 3 years ago

    @deluxeeditionjm:

    Tap and hold for a short while on on either end of a link you don't want to get rid of it.

  • Sobtanian #70 3 years ago

    I played Slitherlink to death based on your review...

    I'm now playing pic pic (well, Drawing) to death based on your review....

    Stop killing me :p

  • secombe #71 3 years ago

    My point was that Eurogamer seems to be giving out a lot of 10's to obscure games for not much other reason than they are obscure.

    Did you even read it?! There is more than enough justification in the text for a 10, the 'obscureness' has nothing to do with it.

    Why should little known titles be less deserving of a high score than, say, a major blockbuster title such as GTA? If anything I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often on a platform like the DS, considering there is less expectation from the masses of ultra realistic graphics, and in theory more room for some clever, original ideas.

  • tardo #72 3 years ago

    I went and bought this from hmv today. It was £20, but I traded in Mario Strikers for £15, so was only £5 hard cash. Not yet played it, but very much enjoyed Picross.

  • rogueJT #73 3 years ago

    so do you think BMX Bandits is the best film ever?
    Edited by 1 at 25/10/08 @ 19:53

  • Kon #74 3 years ago

    @remo

    Your logic, if one could call it that, has more flaws than I can care to count.

    "Eurogamer is snobbish which affects its scoring. And when its not being snobbish its being political. I haven't trusted it's scores for the last 2 years."

    yet you still bother to visit, read the reviews and comment on them,

    "BUT, I do like some of the reviewers and I like this review of Pic Pic"

    Really? Who was it that was bitching about the score this obscure game got about one page back then?

    "My problem was not with the reviewer but the fact that a highly personal and subjective review appeared sanctioned by Eurogamer when 99/100 people wouldn't give this a 10."

    W.T.F.?! You don't trust the reviews here so what do you care? Do those 99 friends of your feel the same?

    If I must educate you, good reviews ARE supposed to be personal and subjective. That is why you should follow reviewers rather than a website. Still, you want a strictly objective review? How about this then :

    Picross DS
    Graphics = basic, functional
    Sound = elevator tunes
    Stability = no crashes observed
    Controls = work, require stylus
    Final score = X/10

    Lovely innit?

    Also, Eurogamer is a name so it doesn't sanction shit.

    "Its like me running Empire magazine and doing a top 100 films and making BMX Bandits 'The Greatest Film Ever', just because I personally think it is. There needs to be a general agreement among the staff that it really deserves to receive that accolade. "

    So, will we have someone playing a game for 10 to 100+ hours, write a review and then gather the rest of the staff who didn't play the game nearly as much or at all decide if they agree before posting it, OR, do we have a rule stating that each and every EG staffer must play the same games for the same exact amount of time and later discuss their opinions on it until they reach a consensus before a review is written and published?

    Wait, maybe we can have robots from the future do it. Thats it!

    "I can see that this is going over your 12 year old spotty heads, so I'll give up."

    I have no idea if you're older or than me or not, but you sure are a hell of a lot more stupid. Are you just a middle age dumbass or has senility set in already?

  • tardo #75 3 years ago

    I don't mind that it was given a 10, as at least it's given it a lot more attention than if it was given a 7 or 8. Which shouldn't be the main purpose of giving something a 10, but is a nice side-effect. I've played the first 30 levels of the drawing one now, and whilst finding it good, I'm not finding any personal spark with it. I'm just doing the levels, just to complete them. Whereas, with Picross, I enjoyed the satisfaction of completing the levels. For some reason it's not the same with Pic Pic for me.

  • Kon #76 3 years ago

    @ rem

    You really don't have a clue on how things work do you? Christ almighty I swear I'm getting stupid just reading your comments.

    Goodbye deary, I'm done trying to educate swine.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #77 3 years ago

    There obviously should be input from other reviewers

    I'm going to assume you're not a disgruntled EG staffer, so... how do you know there wasn't?

    Twat.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #78 3 years ago

    Awesome! Mad debating skillz!

  • Kon #79 3 years ago

    Oh my, the lad certainly has a vivid imagination..

    ...too bad he decided to share it with the rest of us.

  • dryden555 #80 3 years ago

    Some folks seem to believe that saying "all reviews are subjective" somehow means that all reviews are immune to criticism for lack of clarity or lack of insight. Its a kneejerk comment and lacking thought.

    I think Walker's review is fine here. He makes it clear he's a GIANT fan of these games and he explains how the gameplay works. Reading the review made it clear to me I would find the gameplay tedious and boring, and for me, this was a helpful review to read. The 10 score doesnt bother me even if the game sounds like a 7 to me.

  • [maven] #81 3 years ago

    My copy (from Play) arrived yesterday, and - as with Slitherlink - Mr. Walker was right, so thanks for that. =)

    Rev: 10% of all games should score 10/10 (or 9% if you allow scores of zero). If anything, EG still massively under-uses it.
    That only makes sense if games of every quality were equally likely (which IMO they aren't). You could rather make an argument that the "average" score of a site over time should be 5 (= "average";), but even that is a lot harder to do than one might think.

    I've always wondered why aggregation sites never do any statistical post-processing (based on prior review history) that tries to even out the bias (in the statistical, not platform preference sense). But that's probably another can of worms...

  • secombe #82 3 years ago

    Thought I would jump back in here...

    Ordered from Play for the other half, she is obsessed. Brother in Law = also obsessed. Me = also obsessed, Mother = now also obsessed.

    Thank you, Eurogamer, for highlighting a game that I wouldn't have even glanced at in a game store. Amazingly I even found a second hand copy in Gamestation this weekend, which has got over the issue of only being able to have two save games alongside each other.

  • adfegg #83 3 years ago

    WH Smith publishes, or used to publish, PicPic Drawing puzzle books by another name. They're called Enigma. If you like hand cramps, you should seek it out.

  • rock27gr #84 2 years ago

    Is this available anywhere? Not even Gamestracker seems to know it exists.

  • NikeFerrari #85 2 years ago

    Good luck finding 1.