Ready to slow things down a bit? Sure, sitting down with a good ol' crossword puzzle might not get the blood pounding, but there's something simple and serene about filling in the grids at a leisurely pace. It's a game of patience and dedication, not to mention smarts -- not the typical fare for today's high-adrenaline gaming, but definitely a worthy alternative when you want a pleasant distraction next time you're on the go.

Crosswords DS, yet another Nintendo entry in the Touch! Generations lineup, provides such a distraction. It's simple, fun, and caters to crossword puzzlers of all skill levels. Add to that numerous word searches and anagrams and you have a pretty well-rounded package, one that even a staunch anti-puzzler could find something to like in. Want to hear more? Check out this week's edition of Gaming to Go and see for yourself if it's time to switch out the Sunday paper for your trusty DS.

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Sometimes the stylus is a beautiful thing. Such a tiny white stick has infinite potential for interaction, introducing new control schemes and input methods to a industry clinging dearly to its buttons. Nintendo clearly has no qualms taking a risk with its input devices, if that semi-popular magical remote thing is any indication, though its more diminutive sibling demands its own share of the limelight. When it works, it works, and the stylus becomes an indispensable part of the gameplay.

Sometimes it doesn't work as well as it could. For exhibit A we have Exit DS, a poster child for the "Buttons are Best!" camp. Call me picky, but the option to select a more traditional button control scheme is Exit's saving grace, since I don't think I would have made it very far in were I forced to wield the mighty stylus through all one hundred and fifty levels. It helps too that there's a pretty interesting game behind it all, one that's easily worth checking out if you don't mind putting up with a few control quirks. That game happens to be very well-suited for Gaming to Go, as you might have guessed. Want to hear more? Hit the A button to advance to the next screen!

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You have a pretty good deal here, considering that the entire package runs for only twenty dollars. Mah Jong Quest Expeditions and Jewel Quest Expeditions both debuted for around the same price back in 2007, so getting both of them with a new game entirely for the same cost makes for a bargain-hunter's dream. If you're looking for solid incarnations of Bejeweled and Mahjong to bring with you on the road, the versions included here rise to the task admirably. The strange game of solitaire thrown in is worth giving a go too, so what are you waiting for?

Ready for the stats?

Sleep time: Not a single title in the trio will pause for you, but nor do they really need to given that the games aren't time-based affairs.

Load time: Around twenty-five seconds to get going with one of the games, courtesy of the usual culprits. On the bright side, though, one of the corporate logos is a surprisingly entertaining animation!

Play time: A single level in each game should run you around five minutes, with exceptions made for the Mahjong puzzle mode, for instance. That one probably depends on how much empty space you have between your ears.

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The first of the trio is Jewel Quest Solitaire, which takes Solitaire and Bejeweled and mashes them together into a strangely compelling mix. The premise is simpler than it sounds: you're given one deck, referred to as the foundation pile, and an overturned card next to it. Above that you'll have cards spread out in a variety of formations, most of them overturned until you can use the few cards atop each particular stack. You can add a card to your foundation pile so long as its value is either one above or one below the card currently overturned next to the pile. You'll keep adding cards to the pile until the remaining numbers out on the field don't fall into the required range, at which point you'll flip over the next card in your foundation pile and hope for the best. The number of cards in your foundation pile is limited, so you'll want to remove as many cards from the field as you can before needing to flip.

If that description has you scratching your head, breathe easy. A tutorial is included with the game, but it's unnaturally lengthy, so I'd advise just diving right in and seeing for yourself how everything works out. Playing is much easier than it probably seems, and it's pretty fun, too, especially once you throw the jewels into the mix. Every time you add a card to your foundation pile, a jewel for whatever suit that card is will fall into a board on the top screen. Once you've removed every card from the field, the board will take over and give you a limited number of turns to start swapping. Clearing a set of three jewels will turn the spaces beneath them gold, and you'll want to turn every space on the board that same color. You'll receive a sizable boost to your score for the effort.

Having a board full of the same gems will help quite a bit, obviously, which adds an element of strategy to the card play. You'll want to keep a careful eye on the suits you're removing from the field, as it's best to keep the cards you're pulling off in the same suit instead of bouncing back and forth between suits just to get the next sequential number. This is another intuitive process you'll lock in to the moment you encounter it in the game, so take another deep breath if my long-winded description has you a little worried.

Jewel Quest Solitaire is surprisingly fun, once you wrap your mind around the rules, and it's pretty quick, too, once you get going. More rules and gameplay tweaks are added as you progress through the game, all of which help add layers of depth without bogging down the flow noticeably.

The second of the trio is Jewel Quest Expeditions, which is pretty much a straight rip of Bejeweled with the rule set of the jewel board mentioned above. As the name implies, you'll be matching shiny jewels as you go throughout the adventure, though things like gold coins and buried jewels give you a bit more to do beyond the basic. Matching up three gold coins will give you a special move for moments of desperation, while buried jewels have to be matched up with two of the same color of jewel before they're unearthed. They're nice enough deviations from the basic gameplay to keep things interesting, and can even add a little challenge to the proceedings, a welcome addition to what would otherwise be a simple quest to turn every space on the board gold and move on to the next level.

The last game in the trio is Mah Jong Quest Expeditions, a simple game of Mahjong solitaire coupled with a few additions to the basic formula. You're still matching two tiles together to remove them from the board, but now you have delightful things like balloons and dynamite to deal with. They don't revolutionize the gameplay by any means, but they're still welcome inclusions to an already solid game of Mahjong. There's also a puzzle mode that tasks you with clearing out a specific layout of tiles using basic Mahjong tiles, and even a Classics mode that includes numerous more games of Mahjong solitaire at varying difficulties minus the tweaks found in the regular Quest mode.

The main complaints with this version of Mahjong are the size of the tiles, which is admittedly pretty small, and the absolutely atrocious menu, which throws a few strange icons your way and forces you to try and get to where you want to go by trial and error. It's an utter pain in the ass to maneuver until you memorize which icon does what, and a completely unnecessary addition to the game, especially when plain text would have removed any guesswork at all. Still, if you can swallow the fact that the menu is an awful game itself, there's a fun and solid game of Mahjong beneath it, one that's just as well-suited for gaming on the go as the other two titles in the trio.

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You've played this game before. Probably. See, here's the thing -- The Quest Trio isn't a singular title so much as it is a collection of games, as an in-depth analysis of the title would probably suggest. For your money you'll get a variant of Bejeweled, an interesting version of Solitaire, and a pretty decent take on Mahjong, three classic games that should be fairly familiar to just about every person ever. The Quest Trio gets interesting, however, when you consider that two of the titles in the package have been previously sold as standalone products -- and for everyone's favorite handheld, no less!

It might sting a wee bit to discover you already own one member of the trio. It might hurt a hell of a lot to discover you already own two of them, in which case I'd advise you sit this one out and find a warm corner to cry in. For everyone else who loves the sound of three great games bundled together for your gaming pleasure, click that big button down there and see if this week's edition of Gaming to Go covers just the sort of puzzle compilation you've been questing for.

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So what are you waiting for? Space Invaders Extreme is apparently out of stock on Amazon until January 2, 2009, but even the thought of dragging the piggy bank out and hitting up your local store shouldn't deter you. If you haven't experienced it yet, this version of Space Invaders is one definitely worth picking up, as it's pretty satisfying to play whether you're on your commute or just lazing around during the holidays.

Ready for the stats?

Sleep time: Space Invaders Extreme won't pause unless you force it to, sadly.

Load time: Around twenty-seven seconds to jump into the Arcade mode, courtesy of everyone's favorite corporate logos.

Play time: The first few levels shouldn't take you too long, provided you're not awful. Later ones can be pretty challenging, so let's say this one is up to your personal skill level. Still, the levels are short enough to be ideal for gaming on the go, and that's what counts, right?

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My fingers hurt. If Space Invaders Extreme is anything, it's an absolute workout for the fingers, a test of endurance, passion, and an opportunity for developer Taito to take an old formula and crank things up to 11. Very rarely does slapping on the word 'extreme' actually mean anything, but this latest incarnation of Space Invaders is an exception to that rule, as my sore thumbs can attest.

Did you miss out on the original Space Invaders? The classic was before your time, perhaps, or deemed unworthy for whatever coins you could bleed out of your piggy bank. Dry your tears, friend! This extreme update of a retro classic is your greatest chance to find peace in these discordant times. Come along with this week's edition of Gaming to Go to see why saving quarters all those years ago might have been a good idea after all.*

*So now you can buy this, see? Not because the original was bad or ... nevermind.

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This is the other occasion where you're allowed to roll your eyes and say "Well, duh." A Sonic the Hedgehog game being featured for its emphasis on speed? Yeah, it's not a revolutionary concept, but it's still not quite the immediate conclusion one might have drawn some ten or fifteen years back. Where the much-maligned hedgehog used to be known for ultrafast platforming, recent entries in the series have introduced all kinds of kooky new gameplay elements, often stealing the spotlight from eye-melting rollercoasters and placing it firmly on beloved new characters like Big the Cat.

Sonic Rush, however, is a throwback to the olden days, when a typical Sonic level had twists, turns, and strategically-placed spikes after every freaking loop. That's the precise formula the series built its name on, and it's this exact same formula that makes Sonic Rush such a thrill ride to play. It's pretty possible to blaze through some of these levels in under three minutes, especially early on in the game, making it a title pretty well-suited for this week's edition of Gaming to Go. Thinking of giving Sonic another chance? Click that big button down there and see for yourself if it's worth bringing this hedgehog along on your daily commute.

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CALAMITY! The light is gone!

In the dark? You aren't the only one. The cute little story sequence at the beginning of Prism: Light the Way speaks of Bulboids, Glowbos, and an even stranger assortment of words, describing some horrific process wherein a star monster is totally crashing an intergallactic party or something. The thread-bare plot in Prism isn't the greatest thing you'll read this week, but the solid puzzle mechanics beneath it sure make the whole thing much easier to bear, especially if you're interested in trying a puzzle game that doesn't involve matching up three or more blocks of the same color.

One look at Prism's interface and accompany soundtrack might make you change your mind, admittedly, but persevere and you'll find a fairly satisfying adventure awaiting. With over 100 different puzzles to conquer and a few additional modes to mix things up a bit, Prism: Light the Way is definitely worth a more in-depth look, so why not come along with this week's edition of Gaming to Go and see if this unknown puzzler will tempt you to lighten your wallet a bit?

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Touchmaster? It's a great game, sure, what with the twenty-three different activities packed tightly into that tiny plastic cartridge. I can scarce imagine the marketing ploy that lead to naming it something quite so charming as Touchmaster, though, which invokes imagery of things totally not appropriate for a family-friendly console. Still, if you don't mind the curious choice of name, the game offers quite a bit of value for its price, and -- here's the best part -- it's pretty well-suited for gaming on the go!

It's also pretty similar to previous favorite Clubhouse Games, though there's enough difference here to make both titles worth picking up. Where Clubhouse offered digital versions of classic card games, Touchmaster expands the concept a bit, introducing some quirky clones of popular games otherwise not seen on the DS. Sound like a good time? Touchmaster has a lot of things worth checking out, so come along with this week's edition of Gaming to Go and see for yourself what the fuss is all about.

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And there's the simple fact that it's fun, too. I've never been huge on number puzzles, but the ones included in Picross DS deftly combine good challenge and good entertainment, making it a great title to take with you whenever you're on the go. Amazon has it for a little under twenty bucks at the moment, which is a little higher than I had expected, but given the great wealth of content present in the cartridge, it's a pretty fair price.

Still a little leery about all of those numbers? I don't blame you. But puzzling my way through Picross DS's numerous challenges -- short and long! -- has helped me see the light, so to speak, or at the very least helped me enjoy a different kind of puzzler whenever I'm on my daily commute. I do love me some crazy block action, sure, but it's nice at times to go for a calmer, more logical challenge, and Picross DS provides that in spades.

Stat time!

Sleep time: Picross won't automatically pause the timer whenever you close the lid, so be sharp whenever you take the DS out of sleep mode. This won't seem too important until you're exactly one eight-minute mistake away from bumping your completion time over an hour. Every second counts!

Load time: Less than twenty seconds to jump into a Daily Puzzle, though that time can drop to a clean fifteen if you're loading Quick Save data from an unsolved puzzle. Short load times are glorious.

Play time: This one depends entirely on the puzzle and your personal skill level. I wish I could offer a general estimate, but trust me when I say this: some of the puzzles will fly by. Others will take forever.

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A description of how a typical Picross puzzle plays out won't be the most exciting thing you'll read today, but bear with me for a moment as I run through the rules. You'll start with an empty grid of varying size -- starting at 5x5 and ultimately running up to 25x20 -- and a series of clues for each column and row. A typical clue will read something like "2 1 2," which means there is a group of two squares, a group of one square, and another group of two squares in that row or column -- in that order, and with at least one blank square between them -- that must be filled out. Filling out the right squares in each column and row will ultimately create a picture and yield a successful completion of the puzzle.

If you have any familiarity with nonograms, you'll do well with Picross DS from the start, though the learning curve might be a bit steep for anyone going in blind. Following the clues and filling out the correct squares on the grid may not seem so simple at first, but the game employs an excellent progression to the hardest puzzles, starting you out with small, simple grids and letting you develop your logical thinking before you can unlock and tackle the most difficult challenges.

You're given a sixty-minute time limit in Normal mode to complete the puzzle, though every time you fill in an incorrect square you'll be docked a certain amount of minutes. It isn't a real threat early on in the game, when you can take a puzzle with you on the road and spend maybe five or ten minutes to work through it, though the sizable final puzzles will require a longer investment. Picross provides the option to save your progress in a puzzle and return to it later, however, allowing you to turn the DS completely off and not have to constantly resort to sleep mode whenever you fiddle with a large puzzle over the course of the day.

Picross DS also comes with a wealth of gameplay modes that change up the rules just enough to be keep things interesting. Free mode ups the difficulty a bit by not informing you of any mistakes and generally making the puzzles more challenging, though you're given a Try It Out option where you can study the puzzle and create an overlay to try and solve the puzzle without fear of horribly screwing up the puzzle itself. If you like what you do with the overlay, you can directly apply it to the puzzle itself, making overlays an essential tool for solving Free mode's numerous difficult puzzles. My Picross mode allows you to create your own picross puzzles, which is a surprisingly nifty addition, though the impatient can instead dive in and download some additional puzzle packs over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Daily Picross mode is where things really get interesting. The initial challenge provides a series of five 7x7 puzzles, tasking you with completing each as quickly as possible to earn the highest ranking. Each mistake will cost you five seconds, however, which makes things decidedly more difficult when you're trying to get an A ranking and complete each puzzle under thirty seconds. Playing the Daily Picross mode multiple times is the only way to unlock the additional four challenges, all of which mix things up in surprisingly mean ways. Memory mode, for example, requires that you sit and study the clues for twenty seconds before you can start solving the puzzle. Once those twenty seconds pass, the clues will disappear, forcing you to rely on both your memory and the occasional clue that'll pop back up over the course of the attempt.

Achieving an A ranking in all five of the daily modes is far easier said than done, though developing your skills over repeated attempts is a great way to spend a few minutes each day. And there's always a plethora of Normal or Free mode puzzles to work through, most of which -- depending on your brain power, admittedly -- shouldn't take too long to complete. Picross DS may not have the speediness of other titles this column has covered so far, but it's still pretty well-suited for gaming to go, as you can take a puzzle with you on your day and work through it as quickly or slowly as you want whenever you have time for a break.

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Math is fun! Or something. Normal people likely don't put much stock in the words, but every now and then a complex equation or three can be a great way to get the mathy part of your brain up and going. You could also just play Picross DS, an interesting take on the puzzle genre that emphasizes numbers and clever calculations over explosions and unbridled quirkiness. That probably paints Picross in one of the least interesting ways possible, but, uh, just run with it, okay?

Picross is fun. I didn't fully expect it to be the first time I fired it up, but wonders never cease when a refreshingly different kind of puzzle and the charm of Nintendo's Touch Generation series unite in nerdy, digital glory. With a ton of puzzles to conquer and numerous different modes of play, Picross certainly has a bevy of content to work with, transforming it into a title definitely worth snagging for your daily commute. Sure, some of those later puzzles might take longer than your lunch break, but Picross DS is still a supremely portable title, and one definitely suited for this week's edition of Gaming to Go. Want to hear more? Click that big button there and start believing in the power of numbers.

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But what of sleep mode? Yeah, Zoo Keeper lacks it. I've read it comes from a bug in the programming which was fixed for European release, though that doesn't help the American audience much in the grand scheme of things. Being able to close the lid and put your game on hold is one of the more obvious reasons for why the DS is such a great handheld, so forcing a sizable portion of the consumer base to go without it makes giving Zoo Keeper the Gaming to Go seal of approval much more difficult than it should be.

Ignoring that one flaw, Zoo Keeper is a great portable title, taking the classic Bejeweled formula and tweaking it enough to create a highly-addicting and satisfying game. If you can get your hands on a European copy of the game, I'd say go for it, especially if you plan to take it with you on your daily commute. But even the bugged American copy runs only ten dollars on Amazon, making it a cheap and accessible way to get your block-matching fix. If you're willing to overlook the lack of sleep mode, Zoo Keeper is a great game to spend your time with, though you might have to get used to turning the game off whenever you're on the go.

Ready for the stats?

Sleep time: Seriously, what were they thinking?

Load time: Fifteen seconds to jump into Time Attack mode, which is likely the best number we've seen yet. Not having to cycle through thirteen screens of corporate logos makes getting to the good stuff supremely easy.

Play time: This one depends entirely on what mode you play. Time Attack, the one mode made ideal for gaming on the go, will run you six minutes every time, though Normal mode and a few others can in theory go on for hours if you make enough matches to consistently keep the timer from running down.

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As the screenshots suggest, gameplay in Zoo Keeper is what we've come to grow to love from classic titles like Bejeweled and Planet Puzzle League. You'll see a random assortment of icons on the screen, more falling down every time you successfully switch the blocks around and line up three or more of the same type. Zoo Keeper puts its colorful stamp on things by taking the formula and throwing animals into the mix, turning plain blocks into charming animal faces.

It also introduces a welcome twist into the scoring mechanic. You can slide animal blocks around until your stylus finger bleeds and try to rack up the highest score possible, but the only way to 'level up' is to clear a certain number of each animal, the required amount increasing with every new level. Later levels also up the difficulty a bit by introducing new animals and speeding up the timer, which steadily decreases as you play but is refilled a small amount every time you make a match.

These aren't revolutionary changes by any stretch of the means, but they're still pleasant deviations from the norm, propelling Zoo Keeper out of clone status and into its place as a welcome addition to the DS's library of puzzle games. The gameplay is solid and the animals are pretty cheerful, so it's easy to have a good time with Zoo Keeper's normal mode, though one can argue that some of the more interesting features of the game lay outside of it.

Time Attack mode, for example, challenges you to rack up the highest score possible in six minutes. Needing to capture a certain amount of each animal in order to advance in level -- which bumps up your score considerably every time -- makes things much more interesting and challenging than just trying to line up one match after another. It can be a little annoying when the blocks for the last animal you need are nowhere near each other on the screen, admittedly, but you'll still earn points for every match you make trying to get that last creature, so getting your name on the high-score list is doable even if you don't advance too much in level.

Quest mode is where things get pretty quirky. Your boss, the soul-crusher of a man mentioned on the first page, tasks you with a completely random set of challenges, grading you after each one and changing your score to reflect it. The challenges themselves run the gamut from capturing a certain animal 20 times, capturing each animal only once, moving a special flashing tile to the bottom of the screen, and so on. Most take an equal amount of skill and luck to complete the challenge as quickly as possible, as the boss man is quite possibly one of the most temperamental jerks I've seen on the DS's bottom screen. When you perform a task to his satisfaction, he might be so generous as to double or triple your score, but dawdling too long on a difficult challenge can invoke his ire and cut your score by seventy percent, which is just as painful as it sounds.

Getting the highest score in Quest mode can be pretty difficult, as you can imagine, especially when you encounter one of the more difficult challenges right before you've completed the required ten. And then you lose seventy-percent of your score. The tears shall flow. You'll likely than scamper back to Time Attack mode, which provides the best of what Zoo Keeper has to offer in a fairly small and speedy portion. Ignoring the allure of getting the highest score in each mode, I'd argue that Time Attack is probably the most fun experience the title offers for a gamer on the go, especially if enjoy the challenge of conquering on an old high score in such a relatively small amount of time.

But earning the highest score in each of the game's four central modes isn't completely necessary unless you intend to unlock the Super Hard difficulty, which isn't so much more difficult than regular Hard mode as it is more profitable. Playing on Super Hard is the best way to rack up super high scores, so keep that in mind if you're interested in the beating the game as thoroughly as possible. I'd argue that sticking with the original three choices -- Easy, Normal, and Hard -- can still provide ample entertainment for most gamers, though the option to achieve some fairly astronomical scores is there for anyone who wants it.

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