Thursday, March 27, 2008

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Developer: Level-5
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: Feb. 10, 2008
Systems: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E
Official Web Site

In a nutshell: Professor Logic and the Logical Logic Puzzles

0:00 I actually played a 10-minute demo of this game months ago at a Nintendo event. I was impressed with the concept if not with the difficulty of the first few puzzles. But I'm a puzzle addict, so it's gonna take a lot to stump me. I'm also very humble.

0:01
A haunting tune plays over a muted cartoon intro screen featuring a bouncing car and a askew houses. It reminds me of nothing so much as The Triplets of Belleville.

0:02
I enter my name "by hand" (i.e. using frustrating handwriting recognition) and the game segues into some nice full-screen animation on the bottom screen. A tall guy in a ridiculously tall hat hands his young friend get a letter.

0:04
The young one asks the old "professor" why they're settling an inheritance dispute. The voice acting is impressive, with some enchantingly precious English accents.

0:05
Baron Reinhold passed away. His treasure is hidden in the village. Whoever finds it gets his estate. Pretty boilerplate plot, but the animation and British accents keep me enraptured.

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer

3 comments:

MrScaryMuffin said...

You know that you don't have to break out the pen and paper. You can use the stylus to write on the screen before going on to submit your answer.

Kyle said...

Yes, I do know that, only the resolution wasn't good enough so I couldn't fit my notes on the small screen. Guess I should have mentioned that.

Anonymous said...

Actually I found that matchstick dog puzzle the easiest puzzle to solve out of the entire game.

Maybe it means I've already thought of running over a dog with a car and seeing the end result...

The only frustration I found with this game is that the entire town was full of puzzle freaks, I thought it'd be like Hotel Dusk or something. I made this comic in my anger:
http://users.tpg.com.au/surashi//evolution523.jpg