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Sudoku -- iPhone (other)

Reviewed by: ndrake Has Written 3 Reviews
Reviewed on: 4-Aug-2008

Description

Sudoku for the iPhone by EA is a standard Sudoku game. If you've played any of the Sudoku's on the Nintendo DS, you'll have a good idea of what this game is all about. Tap the square you want to fill in, then tap the number you want to fill it in with. You can also annotate each blank square with numbers to track the possibilities for that square. That's it. The game tracks play statistics, including total play time, grids started, grids completed, best time and average time.

There are two game modes, Standard and Newspaper. Standard is plain old Sudoku. There are 5 different difficulty levels. The first three are available at the outset, and the hardest two must be unlocked. Each puzzle you solve is worth a certain amount of points (less points are awarded if you used hints). The points are used to unlock the higher difficulty levels. Newspaper mode lets you create your own puzzles.

The presentation isn't bad. The graphics and music have a classical Japanese feel. Just like EA's Tetris and Scrabble, you cannot listen to the music you have stored on your iPhone while you play. This is a horrible oversight. After testing some other apps, I've discovered that this is not a limitation of the iPhone platform. I was able to listen to my own music while using other applications on the iPhone. I guess EA felt like forcing their lame music on everyone. One other annoyance is the "Auto-Fill" feature. When you press the Auto-Fill button, the game will fill in valid annotations in all the empty squares. This isn't reversible, so if you accidentally tap this button you are screwed.

At a price of $7.99, EA's Sudoku is currently the most expensive Sudoku game in the App Store. It doesn't seem to offer anything that the other, cheaper, alternatives do. I would recommend you shop carefully before dropping $8 on EA's version. Check out iLounge's Super-Mega Review of every Sudoku game available in the app store.