Becoming an international hit in 2005, Sudoku was created back in 1979 under the simple name of “Number Place.” In 2006’s Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, Sudoku was featured as one of the few puzzles to put your intelligence to the test. Now, developer Merscom has decided to bring Sudoku to the Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Buku Sudoku – pretty catchy name if you ask me. Is Sudoku a right fit on Xbox Live?

Buku Sudoku is aimed at the casual gaming crowd, so the title isn’t too tricky to understand. First off, players will have to like numbers to be fully immersed in Sudoku; if not, then they are in a world of hurting as they’ll be scratching their head of what to do. But alas, players shouldn’t fret as Sudoku is easy to pick up and comprehend. For those who haven’t played Sudoku in the past, the premise is to fill the missing spaces on a square grid with numbers that only appear once in every column and row.

Sure it doesn’t sound extraordinarily interesting to play what typically is a pen-and-paper puzzle game on the comfort of your Xbox 360, but you’d be surprised that, at times, it has its moments of entertainment. While the thought of using the control sticks on the Xbox 360 controller to insert numbers on the grid sounds dreadful, there are actually several different control schemes to help assist the player to craft the game to their particular liking.

For gameplay options, Buku Sudoku offers up the ability to switch the number of grids to play on. Whether players want to ante up the challenge to 12x12 grids or tone it down to 6x6, players have the option to do as they please. If players need assistance, they can always ask the game for helpful hints on figuring out where each number is intended to go.

If solo play isn’t capturing your attention, then you can switch over to a variety of multiplayer alternatives such as Co-Op, Team Battle and Head-to-Head duels. Although adding multiplayer was nice, it never ends up being anymore more than an add-on that doesn’t contain any depth.

In case players become tired of the gameplay, Merscom has provided players the ability to change the backgrounds to play on while also giving them the ability to change up audio themes. Perhaps the best advice for players is to load up their own CDs since they will offer more diversity than the audio found in Buku Sudoku.

Gameplay: 6.0
While Buku Sudoku is entertaining at times, its moments of exhilaration are short lived.

Graphics: 5.7
Merscom provides players the chance to change the background, but there’s not much here to judge on the visuals. The presentation is decent and inviting.

Sound: 5.5
Another customization option is to change the audio themes on the fly, but those are even more limited than the background themes.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Beginners will have difficulty in the start, but Sudoku isn’t too hard to figure out.

Concept: 7.0
There should be more puzzle games as such on Xbox Live to cater to casuals.

Multiplayer: 4.0
The multiplayer is limited and will only provide a few hours of distraction before giving up on it totally.

Overall: 5.8
Buku Sudoku is worth your time but it won’t replace your pen-and-paper version. Many will want to have Sudoku on the go rather than static on your 360. At the cost of 800 Microsoft points ($10), it’s hard to justify the price of Buku Sudoku due to the ability to play for free in your local newspaper.