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8: Picross 3D
Picross, the puzzle of kings. More visually interesting than sudoku, more mentally demanding than join the dots, picross manages to inject 500cc of joy into constructing a small blocky picture of a dog out of a grid and some numbers.
Since I’m not trying to drive people away from this website, I won’t explain the rules of picross, but suffice to say that translating it into 3D was one of the smartest things HAL has ever done (right after Earthbound and many steps ahead of Kirby Air Ride). Now, that little blocky dog is in three dimensions, and whether you’re on the toilet or the bus, you can guarantee you’ll just have to solve one more puzzle. You’ll pick it up very quickly and it’s unlikely you’ll ever tear your hair out, but the question you’ll have to ask is whether you’ll ever be able to put it down.
The one glaring omission for me is Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Ridiculously easy to play, impossible to die, and so charming I didn’t need difficulty to keep my attention.
I remember back when Luigi’s Mansion came out, EGM thought its dual-stick control scheme wasn’t intuitive because it was odd moving with one stick and aiming the vacuum with the other. Years later CoD is the biggest franchise in the world and LM 2 would have controlled even better with a second stick. Smh…