Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Puzzle Adventure - Nintendo DS
Battery Backup - 3 saves
1 player

Curious indeed. Known for its classy quasi-artstyle, Professor Layton is a stylus driven adventure game. The premise is that Professor Layton and his assistant are seeking the treasure of a wealthy Baron that has passed on. The Baron issued a public challenge offering the treasure to anyone who could find it. Thus the story begins.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village definitely plays like a traditional adventure game. You navigate through the different parts of town, talk to people and investigate items simply by poking at things with your stylus. But mostly, Layton is a puzzle game. The puzzles are very much what you might find in a brain teaser puzzle book. Among them, they'll test your knowledge of algebra, your spatial abilities, your logic, and even your reading comprehension. There's a bit of variety so it's hard to get bored. That all adds up to a game you can play for long stretches of time, or in short bursts depending on your mood. Since there's over 100 puzzles to rack your brains over, it'll last you a long time regardless.

Some of the nice touches that I enjoyed were some of the puzzle-y mini-games in addition to the normal puzzles you'll find. You'll be collecting items along the way, and even manipulating those items will be a puzzle in of themselves. Many of the puzzles are completely optional. For me, that just gave me more incentive to explore the city and talk to villagers to find them all. But in case you missed any, the game will archive them for you. The puzzles start out pretty easy, but quickly become challenging. Some are downright frustrating. Luckily, the game has a system where you can get up to 3 hints to solve a puzzle. During the exploration segments, you can discover coins to help you purchase these hints. Although the hints won't spell out the answer for you, they can be extremely helpful in determining a solution. The touchscreen itself is also quite an asset. For a lot of the puzzles, you can use your stylus as a "pencil" and write your notes on-screen. It acts very much like scratch paper. Unfortunately, I wish they had allowed that option on all the puzzles, but it is there on most of the math-y ones.

Although the puzzles are definitely a focal point, there are some cool things done for the adventure portions as well. In addition to the collectathon and exploration aspects, one thing that stood out for me was the animated FMV. Even though the DS and PSP are more than capable of doing FMV, I'm so used to seeing static images, so its inclusion is a pleasant surprise. There's a fair amount of animation here to progress the plot. With its unique art and fluid animation, it really complements the game's style very well, as does the British English voice acting. Plus, whenever you continue your game, the game will give you a "Story thus far..." recap of your present situation. There's a lot of nice touches like that.

If you couldn't tell, I found Professor Layton and the Curious Village an enjoyable romp. But despite my positive gushing, I couldn't help but think that Layton did not offer much that a brain teaser book couldn't. The fact that the DS touchscreen mimics scratch paper is a definite plus for gaming purposes, but if its best feature is to emulate 5th century practices, then perhaps all the tech isn't needed. Then again, if you enjoy the exploration offered by adventure games, Layton offers both worlds. And is far more polished than most.