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Fun, but not as challenging as expected

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Sudoku-mania is an engaging game with lots of different ways to customize play. Players can select from three difficulty levels (easy/medium/hard) and two puzzle layouts (2x2 or 3x3).

Players can also select from several "themes," including an animae character, a space scene, lions, or dolphins. The themes allow players to switch between standard sudoku (numbers 1-9) and a series of symbols. For example, the lions theme can be played with numbers 1-9 or with mini animal icons.

This game is my first experience with sudoku, and it was not as challenging as I expected. However, the selection of customization options (especially the symbols play) has kept the game fresh.

Puzzle Crazy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: July 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

With the national craze of Su Doku going on, many people are enjoying a healthy, stimulating challenge that is exciting, and mind-bending too. Within the past few years, there have been many different Su Doku video games released for the P.C., as well as video games systems like the PSP, and the Nintendo DS. Arguably, the Nintendo DS really has had more of them however, with hits like Brain Age, and Su Doku Gridmaster, many more of these puzzle games are hitting the stores around the corner. Now, there is another one that just hit the Nintendo DS library that is sure to please anyone.

Su Doku-Mania for the Nintendo DS is typically like any other video game Su Doku on the market. The object of the game is very simple, you have to get each number from 1-9 in a 3x3 grid, and in each row across and vertically. The gameplay here delivers quite well, as you try to figure out each puzzle and not just with numbers, here you also have puzzles with symbols as well, making it even more challenging for anyone who is already a master of Su Doku. The gameplay is well-conjured, and the control like before is completely relied from the stylus. With so many different puzzles to tackle, you'll be sitting for hours of enjoyment.

I definitely enjoy a challenging Su Doku game once in awhile, and Su Doku-Mania is a great addition to your Nintendo DS library. If you've loved it from Brain Age, you will definitely have a ball playing this one for hours on end.

Graphics: B

Sound: B

COntrol: B 1/2+

Fun & Enjoyment: B+

Overall: B

Not Fun At All

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love Sudoku, and have played a few versions of it. This is the worst one, and the only one I actually did not like. You can not put in little numbers for reference, which was annoying, but not that bad. What really was bad was that after working on a puzzle, the screen changes and tells you it is unsolvable. It really got to me. I got rid of it right away and got a better one. I would never play this one again. It was not good at all.

so so

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

the game was ok, it wasn't exactly what i had expected, i got it because i really liked the soduko game that came in the brain age pack, but this game was nothing like it.

Not a DS Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The biggest limitation of this game: You HAVE to navigate the grid using the D pad, and not with the stylus. If you have played Sudoku, you know you're jumping all over the screen. Imagine having to click-click-click all the way to a open space. This feels like a quick port from another platform, rather than a DS game.

Don't waste your money on this one.

Just say no

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: October 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought hoping that the random puzzle generation would keep it interesting; unfortunately the generator, much like the rest of the program, is a disaster. For brevity's sake, rather than list out every single defect I'll just focus on the two most significant issues:

1) There's no form of annotation -- no way to mark for yourself which numbers have been eliminated as possibilities. So be prepared to drag along some paper with you.

2) The generator produces malformed puzzles. The whole point of sudoku is that there should be ONE solution to the puzzle, and your goal is to reason it out. The designers evidently thought differently, since the puzzle generator often creates puzzles with multiple acceptable solutions. So actually reasoning out a solution is often impossible, and you end up needing to make some random choices.

If you're looking for Sudoku for DS, look elsewhere ...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 22
Date: October 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game after playing the sudoku in Brain Age and I am very disappointed
with Sudoku Mania. The overall quality of the implementation is really shoddy,
especially when compared to Brain Age. Just to point out a few of the major
limitations:

The user interface is really primitive. You can't use the stylus to navigate.
No handwriting recognition (a nice feature of Brain Age).

The font they use for the numbers is very hard to read (e.g. 3's and 8's are
almost indistinguishable).

There's no way to take notes about the potential possible numbers that
are valid in a given square (this is one of the great features of the
Brain Age sudoku).

It appears that they generate puzzles that have multiple solutions, which,
according to my understanding of sudoku, is not copacetic. What's the point
if you have to guess?

Trust me, buy Brain Age, not this turkey!

Worst Sudoku Game we've Played

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 50 / 50
Date: October 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

We have tested quite a number of Sudoku handheld games, both for the DS and PSP. My boyfriend is a Sudoku addict! I honestly have to say that Sudoku Mania is the *worst* of anything we have tried.

You can chose a few options - the difficulty of the puzzle, the number of items per grid (2x2, 3x3) and solving with numbers or symbols. You also choose the theme of your puzzle, which change the look and feel of the game. Then you launch into the automatically generated puzzle.

The layout they chose to use is simply awful. The top display shows the puzzle. The bottom area has four TINY arrows that you can click on to move your "selection cube" up, down, left or right. You have to click precisely to move your cursor around. So you're watching the top screen and clicking in tiny spots on the bottom screen to position your cursor to the cube you want to work on. Yes, you can use the D-Pad as well.

Once you select a spot, you use the stylus to tap ONE NUMBER to put into that cube. You can't put in several numbers to indicate what you are currently working on!! Did the developers even play Sudoku before developing this game? No other game misses this most basic technique of playing Sudoku.

Oh, if you put an incorrect number in - where the number is already in a row or column - it flashes. So much for using your brain to solve the puzzle. Not that you really can solve some of these puzzles - their autogenerator seems to have faults and not all games are intuitively solvable.

All of these issues would already have put this game at the bottom of the list, but even their font choices are poor! Looking at the grid, some of the numbers look like other numbers. The contrast is poor so it's hard to see any of them. Again, these are basic issues that really should have been fixed. It's rather obvious that these guys were out to capitalize on the Sukoku mania and figured that once someone bought the game because it said "Sudoku", they'd be unable to return it.

With all the other Sudoku games out on the market, there's really no reason to get this one.

Rating: 1/5

Great

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: January 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

this was a xmas gift for my step mom & she's going crazy w/it.

Worst Sudoko Game Ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had gone to the store to buy a casino game but I saw this one for $9.98 and couldn't pass it up. It is not worth anything. Putting it on the DS seemed to be an afterthought. It does not use the touchpad for any usefull purpose. It is faster to use the buttons. I was hoping it would be more like the Brain Age version but with endless gameplay. The solutions to most of the puzzles so far have many numbers in sequence and there are multiple answers. The grid is very hard to read and there is no way to enter multiple choices in a box. I'll stick to my $15 touch screen stand alone game that I have. I'll sell the DS version for whatever I can get at my next yard sale.

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