Professor Layton Brings New Twist to Village Mystery

By Connect Mason Game Reviewer Daniel Sims
 
You have eight seemingly identical weights and a scale.  One of the weights is slightly lighter than the rest.  Only using the scale twice, how would you find out which weight is the light one?

This is one of the puzzles players are tasked with solving in Level-5’s (Rogue Galaxy, Dragon Quest VIII) Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the Nintendo DS.  Taking on the appearance of a classic-style puzzle adventure, Professor Layton is really a series of 135 brain teasers wrapped in a text adventure.  The result is something like a mystery novel with a brain teaser printed on every other page. 

Players follow the exploits of Professor Layton and his young apprentice Luke as they explore the village of St. Mystere in search of a late Baron’s hidden fortune, solving a few other mysteries on the way. The people of St. Mystere eat and sleep puzzles. You could be investigating a murder and every villager you talk to still throws you a puzzle, and these puzzles are serious business. 
These are not the mental exercises of Brain Age or the environmental puzzles of most adventure games. The puzzles in Professor Layton are more like the riddles Jeremy Irons tasked Bruce Willis with solving in Die Hard with a Vengeance. They require serious critical thinking and are often trickily-worded on purpose.  People who aren’t well-versed in brain teasers should definitely enter with caution. 
 
Professor Layton allows players to buy hints with coins found all over St. Mystere, but there does exist a definite “you have to be this smart to play the game,” line outside of which the game can seem almost impenetrable.  Furthermore, it’s very easy to cheat in Professor Layton.  Frustrated players might buy hints and then re-boot the game to solve a puzzle or simply find an online guide.  
 
Most of Professor Layton’s charm comes from its excellent art design.  Despite coming from a Japanese studio known for role-playing games with traditional anime-style presentation, Professor Layton manages to look and sound more like a European cartoon.  Its early 20th century setting, earth-tone graphics, accordion music, and animated cut scenes with British voice acting make the game resemble something like a cross between The Adventures of Tintin and studio Ghibli movie.  
 
Bottom Line
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a unique game both aesthetically and design-wise, taking some serious puzzles and sticking them into a charming story accompanied by some fantastic art production.  Those who enjoy brain teasers should not miss Professor Layton but anyone else should proceed with caution before they end up with a headache.