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No pocket pencil required - Ben Taylor - 14/07/2009 17:53:58
Genre: Puzzler - Publisher: EA - Release Date: 19/12/2006

Sudoku is one of those games which is incredibly frustrating to write an opening sentence for, mainly because the whole concept needs practically no introduction unless you were left on the moon back in 1969, manufactured a laptop from lunar cheese and have just miraculously stumbled upon this site after establishing a Broadband connection. Sudoku took the world by storm, managing to infect large amounts of bookshelves and got a whole generation of commuters pumping their arms in glee at The Metro. Now, after takeover attempts on books, newspapers, DS consoles and the back of Nesquik boxes, Sudoku finds its way onto our iPods.

Sudoku wastes no time jumping into edge-of-your-seat numerical tension, offering up several difficulties and awarding dedicated players INSANE mode. After selecting a square with the middle clicker, players must scroll through the numbers 1-9 using the click wheel before making a selection. Simplicity in theory, but throws in a couple of complications. The wheel seems to be overly sensitive to your thumb, meaning that numbers will skip past in the flick of an eye, and should you encounter any bumps on public transport, random numbers will be flicking around faster that the Saturday Lotto draw. With such a fiddly control method and free Sudoku puzzles found in the local paper, Sudoku really has to prove itself to stand out from the crowd.

Nothing can really be said about the game graphically. The title screen scrolls through some beautiful backgrounds of Japanese gardens, blossoming with charming flowers that fill the screen with vibrant colour...until a huge Sudoku grid comes and practically blocks it all. Still, everything looks pretty enough and it stands out a lot more than the back page of your favourite newspaper. A mellow soundtrack accompanies all the puzzles, but obviously players can throw on their own songs.

EA promises a lot more excitement from the dreary modes than they actually offer in the overall package

A new mode which had me more puzzled than any Sudoku grid was 'Newspaper Mode'. Offering up a completely blank grid when opened, the whole point of the mode had completely evaded me until a little bit of sleuthing. With the open grid, players are allowed to input any number into any square they wish. At first glance, it appears that it's a sort of 'Create-your-own puzzle', yet it turns out that its actual function allows you to input puzzles you can find in your paper onto the game...and then solve it there, or even have the game solve it for you. The whole feature screams pointlessness and those who find themselves using it regularly are clearly missing most sections of their frontal lobe, necessary for completing one of the many puzzles Sudoku already offers, and makes for a weak unique selling point.

The 'extras' in Sudoku don't do enough to make this a game that does more than what it says on the tin. It's simply Sudoku. The idea of Sudoku on the iPod does sound strangely appealing (perhaps only to an enthusiast like me), and EA promises a lot more excitement from the dreary modes than they actually offer in the overall package. It's like reforming back into a 6 year old and buying a talking figurine of your favourite cartoon character, expecting hours upon hours of intellectual conversation before realising that a huge amount of pocket money has gone towards an immobile collection of 3 pre-recorded messages...like that, without the crushing of childhood dreams and destruction of naivety...which I guess is a positive...

Not only does Sudoku fail to draw in newcomers, it doesn't do enough to keep veterans hooked and so cannot justify the asking price or the mass drainage of battery life. iPod Nano users get fiddly controls for their money and iPod Touch owners can get Sudoku applications for next to nothing. This time around, it may be best to stick with the basics and get scribbling away with old fashioned paper and pencil.

Sudoku is compatible with iPod Nano (3rd and 4th Generation), iPod Classic and iPod (5th Generation) only.