2-4-1 Sudoku and Kakuro

While we'd be the first to congratulate I-play for its impressive range of 2-4-1 gaming bundles (you can also buy My Dog and Slyder as a pack), we can't help but feel that this one is only going to appeal to gamers with the most extreme streaks of masochism running through them.

Why? Because if you've ever been confused, dumbfounded and irritated by sudoku, then we guarantee you'll be frothing at the mouth and tearing your hair out in clumps with kakuro.

But more on that later. Looking at Absolute Sudoku, the first game in the pack, things are pretty much exactly what you'd expect. You start a game with the now familiar 9x9 grid and you drop in numbers until the whole screen has been filled (ideally correctly).

A row of icons at the bottom of the screen give you options to switch from pencil to pen mode (pencil mode allows you to add up to four temporary numbers), erase a number and go to the game's menu – which gives you a couple of useful additional options and also the ability to turn the help mode on or off.

It's all good, in a functional sort of way, and there appears to be more than enough grids to keep sudoku fans happy until the craze finally wears off and they go back to The Times crossword for their daily commute.

Kakuro, on the other hand, is a nightmare waiting to happen. We confidently predict that after your first intense gaming session, you'll suffer horrific dreams about being chased through a Tron-style grid by giant, axe-wielding numbers.

Explaining the rules of kakuro is hard in such a small amount of space but, very basically, the game takes a lot of the ground rules of sudoku – the object of the game is to fill up a grid with numbers, making sure that you don't repeat any – but the execution is very different, as the game also shares a lot of similarities with the humble crossword.

You enter the numbers in the white squares, but you'll also notice other numbers already hidden away in the coloured squares. These indicate the total sum of the line of white blocks either vertically (if the number is on the top of a line) or horizontally (if the number is on either side). The skill is in making sure that not only do the numbers line up across, but they also tally with any sum coming down, too.

Absolute Kakuro is a faithful, if unremarkable, version of the game with very similar options and controls as the sudoku title it partners. Therefore, you get the same range of options at the bottom of the screen and an identical control system. But in a pleasing symbiotic case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', it's certainly acceptable for both games to share the same engine as it works perfectly well for both.

This bundle, then, is a dream for hardcore puzzle fans. It's functional rather than fancy, forgoing the usual gaming trappings of flashy graphics and animation, and instead simply concentrates on providing two very solid renditions of these popular puzzle games for the price of one.