X
- E
- Nintendo
- E
- Nintendo
- E
- Nintendo
- E
- Nintendo
Picross 3D
DS
Released On: May 3, 2010
83
8.2
All Platforms
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 Critic Reviews
83
86% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
14% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 Critic Reviews
83
86% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
14% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It seems like people are always in need of DS puzzle game recommendations. From now on, whenever someone asks me to suggest one for a family member or a plane trip or something, I'm going to lead with Picross 3D.
From a critical standpoint, it's tough to evaluate Picross, as the game has that near-perfect quality that makes Sudoku, crossword, and Tetris so appealing. That said, HAL took a risk bringing it into 3D, and that gamble pays off big. [May 2010, p.96]
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 User Ratings
8.2
77% Positive
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
16% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
7% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 User Ratings
8.2
77% Positive
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
16% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
7% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Picross 3D is an incredibly unique and amazing puzzle game, boasting catchy music, funny animations, and insane addictiveness make this one of the best DS games of all time
Report
DS
Call it Sudoku Reloaded, in the third dimension, or whatever you want: Word is that Picross 3D is awesome and addictive. You'll overlook the unspectacular presentation, and the amount of 350 puzzles is amazing.
Picross 3D lets you solve puzzles in the third dimension. This is not just a challenge for your spatial-logical thinking, it’s also highly addictive.
Nintendo successfully adds another dimension to Picross. Thinking in three dimensions takes some getting used to, but after a while you can create the most beautiful figures from the grey blocks.
Picross 3D isn't quite as fun as 2007's 2-D Picross DS, but it's a very good puzzle game nonetheless. [June 2010, p.87]
Like many games before this one, moving from 2D into 3D can be a tricky proposition. For every successful endeavor there are countless failures. Luckily, Picross 3D manages to come into its own as a fun puzzle game, even if it shares very few game play traits with its older brother.
One of the best Logic/Puzzle games EVER! Yeah, thats actually true! At least top 10 :P
A sequel is released on the 3DS in Japan. I want to play that game sooo bad! :D
Report
DS
Some limitations prevent it from being a killer addiction, but Picross 3D is well-executed and long-lasting enough to keep you coming back for more.
The Good: Absurd amount of content; good for short bursts; near perfect controls
The Bad: At times predictable, at others deceptive
Picross is a Sudoku that awards you with a picture in the end of the problem--actually solving a problem means to reveal a pic--and that description alone should be enough to explain how addicting the thing can be (or at least how it has been for years with all the several Japanese iterations Nintendo has released since Mario's Picross in the early 90s). But Picross 3D is the first one to give a conceptual step ahead, and a potentially problematic one: expanding the regular X/Y axes to a 3D cube. How does it fare?
In the most worrisome field--the controls--it fares quite well. The scheme of moving the cube freely through the touch screen and locking it in the pickaxe/brush modes with the D-pad is elegant and intuitive. In the presentation side things have gone well too, with sound and visual effects merging nicely for creating a believable "palpable" feeling--the same goes for 3D animations of the objects revealed at the end of each level. (The lack of Nintendo IPs stuff is unexplainable and unforgivable though.)
The problems in Picross 3D lie in two fronts, one inherent to the proposition other put there by the developers: symmetry of the objects and deliberately hidden clues.
First of all, objects tend to have symmetric sides. Movement tricks aside, it's hard to imagine a man, truck or fruit without symmetries--and that would lend an involuntary repetitiveness component to the puzzles. Well, the solution found was not to show numeric hints for every line **** block (like it used to be in 2D puzzles). That certainly did a good job on balancing the difficulty back but the price paid for it was, at several points, to restrain the solutions to a single way of doing it--which is much less desirable than the search for more imaginative items or ways to present them.
Still, even with those limitations Picross 3D ultimately does a good job in fulfilling its goal: to provide a nice casual distraction to have on the go (being on a portable device and all) while offering a more than decent value for those who invest their money on it.
Report
DS
You probably have a decent idea what Picross 3D is if you're looking at these reviews. In summary, it's a math/number based puzzle game. You're given a large cube which is made up of many smaller cubes. On some of the smaller cubes, there's a number. This number denotes how many of the cubes in the underlying column or row are part of the object that you're trying to uncover. As the game advances, some number will have a circle or a square around them. These symbols tell you if the the cubes in that given row are all together, in two chunks, or in more than two chunks.
I love this type of game, and I like to think that I'm pretty good at them. Minesweeper is one of my favorite past-times. This game could've been up there, if not for a few fatal flaws. First off and most damaging is the inability to figure out some of the puzzles using only your math skills. For the most part you can figure out a puzzle using math, but far too often this is thrown out the window, and you're left to guess. This could easily have been fixed by having a "blocks left" counter, much like the "bombs remaining" counter in minesweeper.
The next problem has more to do with the DS itself. The numbers and symbols can be rather difficult to read sometimes. This can easily be fixed by rotating the cube to a better angle, but when you're in the zone you might find yourself making a mistake that didn't look like a mistake from the angle you had been looking from. I'm playing on a standard DSi. This might not be a problem on a DSi XL.
This is a great game for traveling, short or long distance. There's a nice quick-save feature so if you're halfway through a difficult puzzle but need to turn off your DS, you can do so without losing any progress.
Lots of puzzles in this package, as well as a puzzle editor and more puzzles available online.
If something had been done to make all the puzzles solvable without guess-work, I probably would've given this game a nine.
Report
DS
This is a good puzzle game that only keeps some of the Picross ideas in the transition to 3D. The puzzles are nice to solve and I find playing this game a very relaxing experience. There is, however, one thing I can't stand about this game: the stupid mascot that keeps jumping around and making faces all the time. I find it to be nothing but a nuisance and adds nothing to the game, and sometimes it's even distracting when you only have one minute to finish it and you feel you can kind of make it in time, and then you see that stupid thing moving around and you lose focus.
The tutorial levels are very well designed, are not too long and they give you all the information you need to start solving puzzles. There are also some bonus levels that, in my opinion, are even more fun to solve, so that's one other nice thing about this game.
I would have given it a higher rating but all I can think of when I see this game is that stupid duck.
Report
DS
Summary Picross 3D is the sequel to the popular Picross DS puzzle game. The original game was a number-based grid puzzle that challenged players to reveal a hidden picture. Picross 3D moves the action into three dimensions. Picross 3D blends the logical challenge of a sudoku puzzle with the excitement of discovering the hidden images within. [Ni...
Rated E
for Everyone
Platforms:
- DS
Initial Release Date: May 3, 2010
Developer:
- HAL Labs
Publisher: Nintendo
Genres:
