{"id":988,"date":"2014-11-21T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/?p=988"},"modified":"2019-06-27T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:29:13","slug":"tales-of-the-picross-fiend-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Tales of the Picross Fiend \u2013 Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

My two regular readers may recall my year-old article on Picross Addiction and the four color minimalist joys of Mario\u2019s Picross<\/a>.\u00a0 You may also recall a promise of a \u201cpart two\u201d that was going to cover the first two games in the Picross e series on 3DS.\u00a0 Well, how about it?\u00a0 Beyond my usual real life excuses, I\u2019ve also beaten Picross e through Picross e4\u2026Twice. Each.<\/em>\u00a0 So they must be doing something right.\u00a0 Now that Picross e5 just came out, this may be my only chance to write about the series before I fall back into the abyss.<\/p>\n

For me, Picross is right in the sweet spot for logic puzzles.\u00a0 \u201cMath plus Deduction equals Picture\u201d tickles my brain in just the right way.\u00a0 Developer Jupiter has been creating Picross games for Nintendo for a while now and I think the e series is near the platonic ideal.\u00a0 For one, it fixes the problems I had with Picross DS.\u00a0 Offering stylus or button control (I prefer buttons), the interface is minimal, but no longer amateurish.\u00a0 Most importantly, the game no longer zooms in for larger puzzles, obscuring the rest of the board.\u00a0 For whatever reason, Picross is much more enjoyable to me when I can see the whole puzzle.<\/p>\n

\"picrosse-banner1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The e series also introduced several new tweaks to speed up and improve play.\u00a0 Even in Mario\u2019s Picross on Gameboy, you could always select an optional hint feature that would reveal a random row and column to get you started (which I recommend avoiding once you get the hang of the game).\u00a0 However, in the Picross e games you can now \u201cwrap around the world\u201d when navigating the board, as well as when you press down either the Fill or X buttons and move around on the board, the game will not write over marks you have already placed.\u00a0 These may sound trivial, but they are huge time savers.\u00a0 Even better though, is the new blue hinting system.\u00a0 Fellow Picross Addict Nich Maragos explains it much better than I<\/a>, but the short of it is this.\u00a0 With the blue hints, the game is telling you on\u00a0which rows and columns you should be able to figure out another move.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great way\u00a0of teaching how to be a better Picross player.\u00a0 I learned several new ways of\u00a0deducing moves in this series, even though I have been playing these puzzles for a long time.<\/p>\n

So if you A) have a 3DS and B) already enjoy Picross and\/or C) this series sounds remotely in your wheelhouse, then D) you should definitely try it out.\u00a0 But which one should you get?\u00a0 If you are new to Picross, I recommend the first one, Picross e.\u00a0 Its beginning puzzles are little easier, so it seems the best way to dip your toes into the water.\u00a0 If you have played other Picross games, then try Picross e3 first.\u00a0 It has a great 2nd<\/sup> mode called Mega Picross, which makes the math of the puzzles more challenging.\u00a0 Some of the numbers on the top and on the left of the puzzle will now cover two rows instead of just one.\u00a0 Mega Picross takes awhile to wrap your brain around, but it is very satisfying when you start to understand the change.<\/p>\n

\"picrosse-banner2\"<\/a>As far at the other games go, Picross e2 offers a Micross mode, which is a series of smaller puzzles that, when put together, form various famous works of art.\u00a0 Picross e4 offers a sampling of all the modes in the previous games, the ability to play all the puzzles in free or normal mode (I prefer free, where the game does not tell you if you have made a mistake), as well as a selection of larger 20×15 puzzles.\u00a0 If any one of these games clicks for you, you’ll probably end up purchasing the lot, soon enough.\u00a0 I do hope they introduce color puzzles in a future installment. It\u2019s the only thing I can think of that I could want.<\/p>\n

If you do end up trying Picross or if you already have played the Picross e series, here\u2019s something you can try on a second playthrough.\u00a0 Try solving the puzzles only using the Fill marks, and not the X marks.\u00a0 It often ends up being too hard to maintain for a whole level, but it\u2019s a fun challenge and you can solve more of the puzzles this way than you might think.<\/p>\n

Cheers,
\nBen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My two regular readers may recall my year-old article on Picross Addiction and the four color minimalist joys of Mario\u2019s Picross.\u00a0 You may also recall a promise of a \u201cpart two\u201d that was going to cover the first two games in the Picross e series on 3DS.\u00a0 Well, how about it?\u00a0 Beyond my usual real …<\/p>\n

Tales of the Picross Fiend \u2013 Part Two<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nintendo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/picrossfiend2.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Gkjg-fW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}