It's The End of The World As We Know It
I don't think anything says "technological dominance" like the existence of computer simulations of old fashioned jigsaw puzzles. The fact that a once great pastime - a pastime in which the whole family could gather around the dining table to partake in - can now be accomplished by staring at a computer screen means the world, she's a-changin'.
Still, it's not all bad. Puzzles on the computer are fun and they allow you to do more than you cut with tiny pieces of cardboard! Read on to find out why you should renounce your old puzzle ways and embrace the future - the future of puzzles!
A Puzzling Good Time
I don't know about you, but when I think of fun, jigsaw puzzles are the first thing that spring to mind. So imagine my surprise when I sat down with Super Jigsaw Great Art and found out that I really enjoyed it! The game presents you with fifty beautiful puzzles to assemble, all of gorgeous paintings. The paintings cover a variety of topics, from boxing and fruit to cowboys and landscapes. They really are some magnificent pictures, much better than what you'd usually see on the shelf at K-Mart.
The fantastic thing about puzzles on the PC is the sheer amount of variations you can apply. You can change the shape of the pieces from standard squares to the traditional jigsaw shape. This doesn't sound like much, but it really changes the dynamic. One of the most widely used strategies in putting together puzzles is to assemble all of the border pieces first. However, if all of the pieces are square, than there are no border pieces.
You can increase the difficulty of the puzzle, which will control the size of the pieces. With the difficulty bar turned all the way down, each puzzle will be comprised of four pieces. If you ramp the difficulty all the way up, there will hundreds and hundreds of pieces. With the inclusion of a difficulty slide bar, there are several (and I mean several) different difficulties you can play, which is really something special.
You can also turn up the skew of the pieces, which will control how deformed the shapes are. The choices here are limited to none, medium, or high, but that's really all you need, since it still covers a pretty wide area of deformities.
The one key element that decides how hard your puzzles are is whether or not you allow piece rotation. With piece rotation turned on, your puzzle becomes substantially harder.
How Much Do You Like Puzzles?
First and foremost, this is a jigsaw puzzle game. If those aren't your thing, there really isn't anything here for you. However, if you do happen to like the darn things, you'll find yourself in a sweet, sweet puzzle utopia. The ability to customize your puzzles to such a degree is very nice and adds a lot of life to what could be a very boring game. Hopefully by now you've decided whether or not this game is for you.
