If you buy Professor Layton and the Curious Village, get ready to be constantly confused. In The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, there are two boys playing catch in the starting town that give you hints on how to play the game, like “press start to access the item menu,” followed by “but I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.” Basically every character you meet in this game has a puzzle (or puzzles) for you to solve every time you meet them. While some, in the same vein as Link’s Awakening, are written as understanding how this is kind of ridiculous, others ignore it when Professor Layton or his apprentice Luke explain how they really are in a rush to figure out what exactly it is that makes this village so curious. Like the puzzles that make up almost all of the gameplay, it’s utterly confounding at first, but eventually it will make perfect sense.
The story has a couple predictable plot twists near the end, but it’s told with such confidence through animated cut scenes (that are easily the most beautiful things any DS screen has displayed) that you’ll never second-guess its scenario-writers’ decisions. The more game-y stuff in Professor Layton, like these cut scenes, the large amount of dialogue, and the overworld to explore, are enough to interest people who are more into Level-5’s previous efforts than something like Brain Age, but aren’t so overbearing that people who mostly buy more casual fare on the DS won’t be able to make it through to the end.
The puzzles themselves are the perfect mix of easy and hard, old and new. Some you’ll recognize from the puzzle book in your pediatrician’s waiting room, some from middle school math class, and some you’ll never have heard of before. Some you’ll solve almost immediately, and some you’ll spend ten minutes on and still not get, even with all three hints the game offers (and help from a friend). There’s also a weekly downloadable puzzle through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which will extend the game’s stay in your DS, and is a welcome change from most of Nintendo’s online offerings thus far.
It’s exactly the kind of thing the DS is perfect for - the puzzles work beautifully with the touch screen, the audience is there, and portability is perfect for it. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself saying “one more puzzle” for three hours.
