Look at the bottom of this review, and you'll see my name, Dexter Pearson. My surname isn't Vorderman and while I got a decent grade in mathematics when I was younger, I won't be getting a job on Countdown any time soon. Sudoku, a game that Carol has put her face to just recently (even though it wasn't her idea) is now supposedly sweeping the nation, leaving everybody addicted [I'm the only one in the family not hooked! Ed]. Fortunately I wasn't roped into the addiction. Even more fortunate is that this game hasn't made its way to a handheld yet - believe me when I say, if I had to play Sudoku on a handheld games machine on the train to London, I'd probably throw myself off it!

Infinite Sudoku is more of a PC utility than a game. Its strongest characteristics lie in its 'handy features,' while its weakest lie in the entertainment part. Things like a puzzle solver where you can input today's newspaper Sudoku quiz into the calculator and have it all worked out for you is a good feature - and could make you some money next time the Daily Mail decide to give you £50 for solving an impossible Sudoku challenge! Its other strong feature is the ability to print off random Sudoku challenges of a number of different difficulties, along with the solutions - so you can always have access to your favourite number crunching challenge.

The actual game allows you to play many different variations of Sudoku - all boiling down to the same concept, with either more numbers and squares or less numbers and squares, compared to the classic Sudoku everybody is supposedly addicted to. All of these modes can be opened and then you can print off all of these different variations. For those that don't know what Sudoku is all about, let me attempt to explain. There are nine squares joined together in one larger square, three squares on each row, three rows - which makes a big square, like I said. In each square are a further nine squares that may or may not contain numbers. What we have now is a big square grid, with nine medium squares marked out in bold and then technically the rest just looks like a common grid, just like a word search - with rows. The idea is simple. You have to fill the empty squares with numbers ranging from 1-9, but so that each horizontal and vertical row of nine squares make up the numbers 1 to 9, in any order but with each number used only once.

Frustrating is an understatement - this game will have you pulling your hair out if you don't know what to do. There is no proper tutorial, just a poorly written PDF documentation, so Focus is assuming that you know how to play the game before buying the PC version. Eventually, after asking various search engines how to play the game, I come up with a solid result and I was away solving Sudoku puzzles. The game said I should be able to complete this puzzle in nine minutes. It took me thirty nine minutes. Obviously a glitch, because I'm not a dumb Northerner! The game mechanics see you clicking on a grid, pressing a number from 1-9 on your keyboard and filling in the grids like that. It's boring, it's unimaginative and it's strenuous. It's much quicker doing it on paper. The game will tell you if have you have messed up with various colours, which takes the challenge away a little bit - so if you do get something wrong you'll be told if you're entering a repeated number!

At least on paper you can make notes at the side of the grid and fill in things in a lot quicker. You'd get paid for data-inputting down the road and filling in Sudoku grids on screen feels like a job in itself. My biggest gripe though, is that you can buy a book with hundreds of Sudoku puzzles in for £2 - already printed, ready to play. No need to waste printer ink, no need to buy a PC game. I think it's fair for me to say, with a book, if you are getting frustrated at least you can throw it at somebody. What are you going to do with a PC game? I rest my case.

Infinite Sudoku has nothing in the way of sound and graphically the game stinks. Most of the time it's black squares on a white background - it's an eyesore. Truth be told, this game would be good if it was free. It's nothing you can't get free with today's news, nothing you can't download on the Internet and nothing innovative to make PC users want to play Sudoku on their PC. Computer chess is great because arguably it offers some degree of unique PC gameplay. Maybe if Infinite Sudoku had lots of nice colours and the filling in of numbers eradicated some blocks on the screen until you had completed the puzzle and destroyed all of the blocks - offering some kind of extra dimension for a Sudoku enthusiast, then this might get a better score. As it is though - this shouldn't really be touched. Especially by a Yorkshireman.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).