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Tag Archives: Go Sudoku

Soothing Sudoku

I’m mildly annoyed.

While not really offensive or anything, the new game Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku really got under my skin, but not quite in a good way. Only recently did my wife really turn me on to sudoku games, and once I figured out how to play, they’ve been a low-stress haven for me. A bulwark against higher-intensity games.

It’s almost a meditative way to take your mind off your troubles and gain some perspective on life, by doing something mental that is also relaxing. Then along came Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku to mess with my DNA.

Rather than the calm, meditative approach found in, say, PS3′s Go! Sudoku, Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku stresses the importance of competition, including competing online against real opponents, or competing against CPU opponents.

Great… now the game that’s been my low-stress refuge is all about beating the other guy or gal. I’m sure it will appeal to some folks. But as for me, I’ll stick with the nice, low-stress Go! Sudoku package on my PS3. It’s calmer.

Not bad for $2.99

My wife is a big Sudoku fan. Loves the stuff. I’ve never much cared for it. But today we downloaded the demo of Go! Sudoku from the PlayStation Store and darned if the game didn’t hook me, too.

The free “starter pack” offers up four matrices each of four different difficulty levels. I let my wife try it out, because I want thinking Sudoku was about as fun as writing out a bunch of return address labels. My wife was skeptical she’d like it because she prefers to work things out on paper when she does Sudoku.

But soon she was having a decent amount of fun and when I tried it later on, it hooked me, too. We checked into the PlayStation Store again and there are four booster packs available for $2.99 each. I was hoping each pack would offer maybe 50 extra puzzles at that price.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first booster pack weighs in at well over 500 “easy” level matrices, and by the time you buy all four booster packs at $2.99 each, you have over 1,400 matrices in all.

Some folks have been skeptical the PlayStation 3′s PlayStation Store can succeed. But with low-cost, high-entertainment stuff like this available, I think once they work out the kinks (like no background downloading), PS3 and their online store could give Xbox Live some competition this time out in the world of online gaming.