Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box Review (DS)
Professor Layton returns to us in this fabulous continuation of his puzzle solving and crime busting adventures. And he certainly doesn’t disappoint, with a mysterious murder, a stolen box, and a town shrouded in mystery.
Love, redemption and curiosity fulfilled await us at the end of the journey and it is well worth the effort.
Review
Release date: August 24 2009
Website: http://professorlaytonds.com/
Developer: Level 5
Platform I played on: Nintendo DS
Genre: Single player puzzle Adventure Game
TFG’s Professor Layton and the Curious Village Review
Game play
While the title may not specify, this game is clearly a continuation to its fabulous predecessor, Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Continuation, not sequel, is a deliberate choice on my part mainly because the game has not made much in the way of evolutionary strides.
This only gave me momentary misgivings, as I reminded myself that I had hoped for more after the previous game was completed and that’s exactly what they provided.
With a new setting and new puzzles its certainly fresh, but the game mechanics remain the same, it’s turn based, movement from one scene to the next is achieved by taping arrows on the screen, lost puzzles are still found in the witches house, and chatting with every single person you meet is still vitally important (that’s where most of the puzzles are found!)
The new additions are some quite entertaining side games. All of these are found in the Professors Trunk. The two most notable are the Tea Set and the Hamster.
As you wander around talking to people they will sometimes ask for tea. Blend the prefect combinations of herbs to satisfy their dire need. There are eight different ingredients that can be collected to make the twelve different tea recipes that are possible in the game. After finding a few initial recipes by trial and error, I gave up and looked them up online.
The hamster is a little pet that Luke (the assistant) is given to care for. It’s also his goal to get the hamster to loose some weight. Cleverly placed goodies in the hamster’s cage will encourage him to exercise and thus loose weight.
World and Story
One of the Professors’ old teachers has been murdered and its now up to him and his trusted assistant to discover who is responsible. Their journey takes them on a daring train ride and into a forgotten town where only love can triumph over the evil that resides there.
The story does a wonderful job of framing the puzzles, binding them all together for a larger purpose. In fact the story is just one large puzzle to solve that does an excellent job encouraging farther progress through the game.
Without the story the game would just be a collection of puzzles, and though that can be entertaining, it far more exciting to enclose that collection into one larger more compelling puzzle.
Graphics
Simple graphics, with limited animations. It looks identical to its predecessor, using the same static images over static background system. Each character still has different images for different emotions, giving them far more life then even simple 3d models could.
Each large story break also is rewarded with a movie but scene. There must be at least twenty minutes of animated footage in the game.
Things that bothered me
-Scouring for Puzzles
The puzzles in general seemed a bit easier and not quite as interesting. Which leads me to believe that they used most of the great puzzles in the first game. That’s the thing about puzzles, they aren’t really reusable.
They also added a bunch of chess and peg solitaire games. Thankfully these aren’t required to move onward, but it still rankles that they have chosen these puzzles as the challenging ones.
Game finished
Finally tally after completing the whole storyline:
Puzzles solved:114
Puzzles Found: 120
Time played: 25 hours
Total Score: 3225
Hint Coins: 95/110
Pretty much am done at this point. Some of the unfinished puzzles are the jump over all the marbles until there is only one, or jump the knight around the board until he has touched every single square. I’m skipping those. The downloadable content might be interesting though and that might bring me back a few more times.
Mood Progression
Last Thoughts
The game ends with a “to be continued”. Me = Happy!
I also wanted to add that I really enjoyed the music for both of these games. I often play games with the sound off, which means music hasn’t been a big part of games for me. But for Layton I find myself going out of my way to play when I can have the music on.
