Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5381 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: 505 Games
• Released on: 2007-08-17
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Nintendo DS

Customer Reviews

Solid, competent puzzle game but hardly an essential purchase
Oh no, not another Sudoku game. They just keep coming! (I will assume that you know what I am talking about when I say the word Soduku?)Wait...hang on....no...this seems to be an "interseting take on Sudoku"!! hmmmmm................

BRAIN BUSTER consists of five different puzzles that it claims are "sweeping a nation." (That nation must Japanese though because besides Sudoku, these puzzles are unfamiliar!) The five puzzles are all of the number/logic variety. They look like maths puzzles, but really aren't. The puzzles are all pretty fun, for those that like logic puzzles. They offer a nice change of pace from the plethora of Sudoku games out there, and create a balanced array of puzzles to choose from.

All five games play well and react nicely to the stylus, good thing too, since the entire game is stylus only controlled. In fact, Brain Buster is played using only the touch screen, leaving the top screen to display the time and current ranking for the puzzle being played. There isn't much eye candy to be had here, some meteorites fly by and there are some cute-ish friendly graphics that pop up, but the game doesn't need to be graphic heavy. This is one of those titles that could even work on a black and white screen. So I can't beat them up too badly for only having adequate yet clean graphics, since that is all that is required.

Each game has 50 puzzles to play initially. That may be a substantial amount for Sudoku, but for games like Light On, which generally last under 30 seconds, those puzzles are quickly completed. Players can unlock more puzzles by going back through and completing all the puzzles in a short enough time to earn a master ranking. Thankfully, there is also a section that makes randomly generated puzzles to play, but they don't give the player points, or count towards the number of completed puzzles played.

For experienced puzzle players, Brain Buster is going to be a piece of cake. The difficulty does creep up along the 50 puzzles, but it doesn't get hard at all. The game is more like a beginners guide to logic puzzles. It's nice that the developers included answer balls, and helpful tools to make the game easier for beginners, but it should have been balanced out with harder modes so the puzzle masters could have something to be challenged by.