Sudoku Ball Detective [DS]

In Sudoku Ball –- Detective you solve a murder mystery by solving Sudoku puzzles. It may sound strange, but I suppose it's no stranger than killing a goblin by matching colored gems in Puzzle Quest. I don't want to give you the idea that Sudoku Ball is anywhere near as fun as Puzzle Quest, though. Quite the contrary, this is a dull, ugly exercise in tedium. Sudoku is pretty much played out at this point, and rolling six puzzles into a giant Sudoku Ball only draws out the boredom. If you simply can't get enough of the number puzzles you'll find plenty of them to do here, but the experience is hardly new or exciting.

You are retired Scotland Yard detective Edward G. Bannister, investigating the sudden death of an old friend. As in any good mystery you'll have to interrogate people, find clues, chase suspects, and pick locks. Instead of actually performing any of these activities, though, you'll achieve your goals by solving the Sudoku Ball, a 3D globe of six regular Sudoku puzzles rolled into one. Simply adding more grids to the puzzle doesn't make it more exciting, but Detective does mix things up a bit by giving players various objectives. To pick a lock, for instance, you'll have to find the number that goes in one particular square within a time limit.

To maneuver around the Sudoku Ball you can either drag it with the stylus or use the D-pad. You'll write your answers on the touch screen and the game does have good text recognition. There isn't any way to write number possibilities in a square, though, which may irritate some players.

Sudoku Ball – Detective has four game modes on offer:

• Story mode – solve the murder mystery

• Classic mode – solve 90 Sudoku Balls

• Story Level mode – play new versions of the story's Lock Pick, Chase, and Research games

• Flat Sudoku – for the traditionalists who don't believe the Sudoku is round

Closing Comments
If this were the only Sudoku game on Nintendo DS I'd say fans of the number puzzle should pick it up merely for the 240 exercises it offers. But at last count there were several thousand other Sudoku games available on the handheld -- most of which don't require players to watch ugly aristocrats babble on and on in between games. The text recognition works well so if you absolutely gotta have some Sudoku this will suffice, but hasn't the world had enough Sudoku by now?

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