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Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Level-5
Genre: Puzzle / Adventure
Release: February 11, 2008
Platform: Nintendo DS
Reviewer: Eric
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is not the same old game you’ve seen
all the time on the Nintendo DS. From the title of the game to the actual game
play you know this is going to be a real treat. Do you think you can keep with
all the puzzles in St. Mystere or is your stay going to be kept short?
Right from the gecko the game starts out with some beautiful animations. I
haven’t seen cut scenes like this since the last Final Fantasy game that was
released on the Nintendo DS. With cut scenes like this you might think this game
is only out to wow you with its graphics. That isn’t the case; this is just one
of the many positive points to this game.
Everyone in the curious village of St. Mystere loves puzzles. These people must
live and breathe puzzle, its crazy! Just talking to a person will bring you into
a puzzle, something challenging or extremely easy. There is a nice variety of
puzzles to solve in this game, comparing this to one puzzle game would do that
other game no justice. Think of this game as three puzzle games in one for the
price of one Nintendo DS game.
As much as these people love puzzles I found it real strange that these people
don’t care too much about what’s going on in the town. Whenever something bad is
happening in the town the damn people won’t shut up about their puzzles. I know
this is a puzzle game, but if you are going to add in other aspects to the game
you better do something about the AI.
Some of the games puzzles are required to complete if you want to go forward
with the games story. A majority of these puzzles are do able, there isn’t be
any real stressing just trying to be the game. There are a lot of secret puzzles
to complete in the game as wekk. None of these are required to beat to progress
in the game, but what is the point on skipping these puzzles?
The game is a basic point and click adventure. This is done nicely with the
Nintendo DS controls. Use your stylus to do anything, it is that simple really.
It has the feel of the early nineties point and click adventures on the PC, but
instead of bad dialogue and easy game play you have a puzzle game that is corky
and witty.
 One aspect of the game that is a huge let down are some of the puzzles. There
are a lot of them don’t worry about that. Some of these puzzles though may be
multiply choice questions so you can easily guess and shut your system off to
redo them. Doing this is cheating in ways, but since there really isn’t a game
character telling you what you did is wrong what is the big deal, right? In
Animal Crossing if you would do something like this one of the games characters
would yell at you next time the game was turned out.
This aspect of the game can make the replay value a little small. If you were to
actually go through and play the game without resetting you have a few hours of
solid game play. You get rated per puzzle so you can go back and try to beat
your old score. Honestly you can earn hints on some of these puzzles; this
should be more than enough to beat the puzzles.
Remember how the Nintendo DS has online capabilities? Professor Layton and the
Curious Village takes the use of online to a whole new level. Nintendo says they
will release a new set of puzzles every week. If this promise can be kept then
this game is a real treasure, for no extra money you are almost getting a new
game within a few months. I will let everybody know in the next few weeks if
Nintendo is keeping their promise on this one.
Final Verdict
This is one of the first must own games for the Nintendo DS this year. Puzzles
games are being released on every system, but right now it looks like Nintendo
has the upper hand with Professor Layton and the Curious Village. With its fun
puzzles and updates weekly (hopefully) there isn’t one good reason why you
shouldn’t own this game. Puzzle fans this might be your saving grace, pick this
game up right now!
Rating
9.50 out of 10
Professor Layton and the Curious Village Trailer
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