Picross 3D
Platforms	Nintendo DS
Genre	Perfect cube puzzle
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I can't name a lot of puzzle games I've honestly enjoyed.  Tetris Attack, the Professor Layton series if those count, World of Goo?  As you can tell I'm not a huge fan of the genre.  I might play a puzzle game for a few rounds before I become bored, but Picross 3D was different, really different.  I've already managed to beat over 200 levels and was becoming so obsessed with the game I was carrying my DS to work in case the opportunity came up over lunch.

Picross 3D is not a typical puzzle game, it's slow moving and requires a lot of careful thought.  There is little guessing involved and it does an excellent job of driving you on from puzzle to puzzle.  As someone who had never played a Picross game before, I really had no idea what I was getting into until I read Nate's half hour review of the game.  The game is cheap though so there's little investment for a chance of tons of hours of gaming.  Plus it reminds me of my Kakuro obsession during my senior year of college.

Get ready for my shortest review ever!

Picross is pretty easy to describe, there's a 3D object shoved into a cube, and it's your job to knock every single block off the cube that's not a part of the object.  There are hints on some rows and columns on how many blocks are included in the object in that particular row or column, and that's all you have to go on.  It's a simple premise but somehow it kept me going for hours on end.  There was just something about knocking away at that object until something started to appear (part of the fun is trying to figure out what that object is before it is finally revealed).

One of my only problems with the game is that it takes a long time for the challenge to rise up to where I actually needed to think, for me, it was right at about 100 puzzles in.  This is a long time of me just doing puzzle after puzzle that were pretty dang easy, but eventually the difficulty did ramp up where I was regularly having fun (not to say the earlier levels weren't fun, just a lot of not having to think).  So I made it through 100 easy puzzles and then another 100 decently tough puzzles before I started getting burned out, which for me seems pretty incredible.

Overall: I don't really know how to score Picross 3D, it's a fun game that should probably be in every DS gamer's collection.  It's only $20 and will probably give you at least that many hours of gaming that's easy to pick up and put down. Well, I lied, this game is not easy to put down.  Check out Picross 3D, it's a wonderful game to fill the void in those slow minutes of your day.