Professor Layton and his young assistant Luke are famous for their insatiable thirst for brain-teasing puzzles.  When they are summoned to the quaint and curious village of St. Mystere to settle a dispute over a will, they soon find themselves knee-deep in a murder mystery.  You can help Professor Layton piece together the clues and crack the case on the Nintendo DS.

Move about the village of St. Mystere and converse with the townsfolk in a fashion similar to that of PC point-and-click adventure games.  Except here, use the DS stylus and touch screen to tap where you want to go.  You must search every nook and cranny and talk to villagers to unravel the mysteries awaiting you.

But there is a catch.  You see, the people of St. Mystere won’t talk to you or give you any clues unless you can prove your worth.  And to do that in this town, you need to solve tricky, brain-busting puzzles.  Many of these puzzles you’ve probably seen before in some fashion, whether it be in an IQ test, puzzle book, or the dreaded times when your kid brings home a math word problem for homework for you to help with.  Use the stylus and touch screen to select, draw, or write your answer as well as draw paths and move matches around to make pictures in as few moves as possible.

Once a puzzle is solved, you may get a clue or an item from whoever presented you with the problem.  Then that particular puzzle will be kept in a journal for you to solve or show off at any time.  If a puzzle stumps you, most of the time you can come back to it later or use a hint coin.  By tapping the touch screen in various places about town, you may discover these coins which you can use to buy hints (up to 3) for the puzzles you must solve.  But don’t use up all your hint coins, as there is a limited amount in the game.  If the puzzles in the game aren’t enough for you, you can download a new puzzle each week through Nintendo’s WiFi service.

The graphics in the game look like a Western European cartoon such as The Adventures of Tin-Tin.  There’s even animated scenes with full voices.  While Professor Layton is pretty much just a collection of puzzles put together with a mystery story, it’s still a charming and enjoyable game for the most part.  Provided you enjoy sinking your teeth into math and logic problems, that is!

Kid Factor:

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is best suited for older kid gamers, ages 10 and up, because of the strong reading, math, and logic skills required.  And even then, they may need an adult’s help for some of the tougher puzzles (though adults can get stumped easily, too).  Even though the story is about a murder mystery, violence is only very mild and you only see a few still scenes of cartoon people in coffins, down on the floor, or knocked out. No blood.  But other than that, it’s a perfectly family friendly game for kids and adults who enjoy solving puzzles together.

One interesting thing I noticed about Professor Layton that doesn’t really affect the game much is that the main characters in the game do their best to be polite and mannerly.  Many video game characters have mouthy attitudes with a chip on their shoulder, so seeing the gentlemanly characters in Professor Layton was rather refreshing.

Figuring out the puzzles in Professor Layton as a family is great, but it can be a little difficult at times since the whole family can’t see the DS screen at once.  So if your family can’t get enough of the puzzles in the game, there might be a good alternative.  Playing the game reminded me of when I was little, and my dad subscribed to a magazine full of puzzles like the ones in Prof. Layton.  It was called Games Magazine, and apparently it’s still around as they have a Web site and everything.  I remember enjoying solving some of the puzzles in Games Magazine with my dad, even though many of the puzzles stumped both of us combined!  So you may want to look into Games Magazine if you like the Professor Layton game.

Even if your kids are too young for Games Magazine or Professor Layton, you can still help them solve puzzles in activity books in their age range.  You may feel a little silly helping SpongeBob get through the maze to give a Krabby Patty to his friend Patrick the Starfish—but your kids will think it’s cool that you’re doing something with them.

Tags: Game Reviews