“Professor Layton” is Jolly Good Fun!

Ever so often a game comes along that manages to blend all the right elements together: a solid plot, mystery , intrigue, and adventure. Ladies and gentlemen I found such a superb game in Nintendo’s Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for the DS. It’s a puzzle adventure that is woven exactly like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels.

Why do I say this? Well, because the Professor Layton series requires a tremndous amount of reading. This is good, though, because this game helps players develop a wider vocabulary. The animation is also visually jaw-dropping and voice acting spot-on.

The story for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is equally engaging. Layton and his assistant, Luke receive a letter from ten years in the future… from a future Luke. The plot thickens as the pair wander the streets of London, only to wind up mysteriously in the future.

For those who are new to the Professor Layton series (like me), the game involves solving puzzles of varying types and difficulty. I’m not talking about your typical Rubix Cube puzzle, but puzzles that require tremendous brain power (though not to the level on MENSA). So far, I’ve encountered puzzles that stress map reading via time direction, telling time on a clock… without numbers, to figuring out the direction of clock cogs.

Each puzzle is worth a certain number of picarats (points). The harder the puzzle, the more picarats. Oh, and another thing;  the Memo pad is an essential tool for working these puzzle. If you submit a wrong answer, you get picarats deducted!

In short, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a definite “must play.” It is one of the best puzzle games that I have ever played since MYST. Kudos to Nintendo for making such an incredible game!