PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE CURIOUS VILLAGE: DS game review

Yesterday I picked up my sorely-neglected nintendo DS and on a whim chose to play Professor Layton game. I played this before but I stopped at puzzle 100plus because I’m stumped with this sliding puzzle I can’t solve. I played the game again this weekend and I’m so happy to have finished it. Of course I wouldn’t have been successful with the game if not for some cheating on the side. Hehehehe. I hate math problems so I always rely on this site if I can’t discover the solution.

Professor Layton is an adventure game where the 2 main characters Layton and his sidekick Luke were commissioned to travel to St. Mystere Village to search for the Golden Apple. During the entire search, the characters are tested with puzzles by the villagers. Some puzzles will reward an item that will complete another puzzle  and unlock additional bonus puzzles in the game. If you think you need to rehash your geometry equations, pythagorean theorem, and other mathematical equations, think again. The puzzles are tricky and often the answers are simple and usually found right there in the questions. I advice that one should ask all the villagers and tap the stylus on all the images in order to find and complete all the puzzles. Not only are the puzzles well-written, the animation and graphic images are well-drawn. A movie scene is played whenever the professor is slowly figuring out the mystery of the village. The animators made those scenes visually entertaining. This game is really engaging, interesting, challenging, and mind-stimulating. I feel very frustrated when I can’t solve the problems but when I do, I feel like I’m the smartest person in the world! I must say Professor Layton is the best puzzle game I’ve played so far. I tried looking for similar games but nothing compares. For those who wants to solve more puzzles, you can download additional games through its wifi option. They’re just puzzles for amusement with no bearing on the story. However, there’s news that a sequel will be out this August 2009. It’s titled Professor Layton and the Devil’s Box. It seems that Japan, where the game is originally from has already 2 sequels out. Unfortunately it’s in Japanese language. Anyway whenever and whatever I can get, I can’t wait to play more of Professor Layton!