Picross e2

Half an hour after I booted Picross e2 up, I had to quit to the main menu just to make sure that I hadn't loaded up the original by accident.

I lambasted Picross e last year for failing to bring anything new or interesting on the regular Picross formula.

Developer Jupiter Corporation has demonstrated with its latest effort that it doesn't particularly care about innovation, as we can barely tell Picross e2 apart from its predecessor.

It's tricky to describe the act of Picrossing without simply repeating exactly what I said in the last review, but here goes - it's all about filling a grid of squares with coloured blocks and crosses.

You decipher which blocks need filling in by using the numbers arranged beside the rows and columns in each grid. The numbers 2, 1, and 3, for example, means that a block of two, then a single block, and then a block of three are situated in that row somewhere, in that order.

By cross-referencing the rows and columns you can slowly but surely eliminate or identify squares, giving you a lovely picture at the end.

The Picross genre has been around for a while (see Mario's Picross on the Game Boy, for example), and is always enjoyable. Got a lengthy commute, or a long plane journey? Picross e2 will do the trick nicely.

You won't run out of puzzle any time soon, either, as the game comes with over 150 puzzles.

Dropping e

Picross e was a rather bog-standard Picross game that didn't really offer anything we haven't seen before. And Picross e2 isn't any better.

It shares many of the original game's visuals, menus, and layout, making the experience feel rather cheap. Jupiter Corporation has taken the original and just swapped new puzzles in.

Well, that's not strictly true - a new mode called Micross provides you with a giant grid made up of several smaller grids. You zoom in to each and complete individual puzzles which go towards solving a giant collective high-resolution puzzle.

This is interesting for about five minutes, until you realise that it's just Picross presented in a slightly different way.

What it comes down to is this: Picross e2 offers nothing you haven't seen before, and there's already a plethora of Picross games that do the job just as well, or in many cases better. This is worth getting if you've solved every other Picross puzzle ever devised, but otherwise you're better off looking elsewhere.