Pic Pic Comments by John Walker

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

NNNNNNNnooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven't even finished Picross yet :-(

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.

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.

Less than £16 @ TheHut.

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...

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

evidently you didn't watch euro 2008.

...or the eurovision song contest.

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

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!

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.

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).

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.

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

It really, really, REALLY isn't.

I have this.

Just two on eBay right now.

http://shop.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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

^ 0_o

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

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.

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.

@deluxeeditionjm:

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

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

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.

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.

so do you think BMX Bandits is the best film ever?

@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?

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.

@ 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.

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.

Awesome! Mad debating skillz!

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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.