I see you hiding there, Sudoku. I remember you, don’t worry. How could I ever forget? You were huge, once. A real big shot. Back in 2005, you were everywhere. You were to recreational puzzle-solving what Amy Winehouse’s cover of Valerie was to music. And now you’re back. From outer space. I just walked in to see you sitting there with a combination of numbers from 1 to 9 randomly arranged on your face. What do you want, Sudoku? And why the hell have you got a bunch of ninjas with you?
Yes, Zendoku is basically Sudoku with a comical, oriental theme. A strained pun, I know, but there are worse ideas. Only a brief look at Puzzle Quest will reveal how successful combining a fantastical premise and storyline with an established, successful puzzler can be. Gosh, I sure do mention Puzzle Quest a lot in my reviews. It’s a really good game, you know, you should buy it.
Take what you know about Sudoku and throw it away. That’s presuming you actually know something about Sudoku. If you don’t, go away, learn about it, come back and throw it away. Because while Zendoku sticks to the rules of Sudoku, it disposes of numbers and replaces them with vaguely martial arts-related images (the Yin-Yang symbol, a panda head, a dragon, a sumo wrestler, a sword, a heart, a dojo, a flower and some sort of umbrella-ella-ella-ay-ay-ay-ay). It also pits you against an opponent, and requires you to defend yourself from their ‘attacks’ by blowing into the DS microphone, rubbing on the screen, and all kinds of gimmicky crap.
OK, I’m willing to buy the competitive Sudoku idea. Worked for Bejeweled (in Puzzle Quest). It’s also pleasing to know that a ‘regular’ Sudoku game is also included, so you can play by dragging big, bright numbers into the boxes rather than severed panda heads. Good news. I feel quite positive about it now. Let’s have a look at Quest Mode.
Picking one of eight characters, which between them sum up every cliché ever held about Eastern culture (there’s a ninja, a masked samurai, and a guy who looks a bit like Ken off Street Fighter), you must undertake a personal quest to, I don’t know, win glory as a warrior or find your girlfriend or something. To be honest, it’s quite hard to pay attention to a few screens of text and static images while you’re mentally preparing yourself to win at Sudoku by pretending to blow out candles and dragging a sumo wrestler across a screen. Don’t worry about it anyway – regardless of your personal quest, the way to go about it involves fighting your way through all of the other characters.
The one-on-one battles are odd. The way the battles are arranged doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I simply ended up trying to play Sudoku as quickly as possible before the enemy did something I didn’t quite understand and I had to do something touchscreen-y to continue. I believe the little mini-games that pop up while you’re trying to play Sudoku (asking you to wipe stuff off your screen or tap on bricks to blow them up) are there to throw you off, or defend you against attacks. But I’m not sure. Yes, I know this sounds like the most ill-educated review ever, but the point is that it took me just one game to realise I didn’t care. The gameplay was frantic and confused, which is not what an intellectual puzzle game should be, and as soon as you thought some progress was being made, a mini-game would pop up and annoy. I wouldn’t be so harsh as to say Quest Mode is unplayable, but just because it is playable doesn’t mean it should be played.
Zen Mode allows you to have a simple shot at completing a Zendoku puzzle without some bastard getting in your face i.e. solo. After picking your prefered difficulty level from Easy to Master, you are presented with a random puzzle to work on. In fifteen minutes. That’s right, you have fifteen minutes to complete it. Great. Just when I thought I was escaping from the rushed gameplay and sitting down to play a calm, cool game of ‘Doku, a ticking clock ruins it. Do well on the puzzle and you’ll get a highscore.
Attack Box is the rather strangely named mini-game mode. Basically an asylum for all the stupid gimmicks, have a go at this is you really want to see how many things you can push off the touchscreen at once. As mentioned earlier, there is a Classic Mode, which is nice, but it still has time limit issues which shouldn’t be there and it falls down in comparison to the wonderfully intuitive system used in Brain Training’s version.
If you have a friend who you don’t like too much, you can hook them up with some wireless play and have a go at completing a puzzle alongside them or against them. I can think of more entertaining ways to spend my time, and one of them involves sandpaper.
This is a light-hearted game, not meant to be taken seriously, but it demands a lot from the player – both high levels of tolerance and skill. Beneath the attractive anime artwork is a fine idea which has been executed poorly. Quite frankly, Sudoku isn’t suited to the high energy competitive game they’ve provided here, and the whole experience just leaves me thinking it would have been much better if the guys behind Puzzle Quest had done it.
So go, get out the door. Don’t turn around now, you’re not welcome anymore… Zendoku.