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Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Thursday, February 19th, 2009 by Nick Maunders
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a recent game developed by Level-5 exclusive to the DS. Released on the 7th November this game has taken the world by storm over Christmas. It has been very difficult to find a copy lately but they luckily they have come back in stock recently. So what’s the game about and why is it supposedly really good? Well the category this game is based in to start with is that of a puzzle genre. So if you hate puzzles don’t buy this game. Although I have to say you will be missing out a lot. I very rarely buy puzzle games yet this one I think is amazing. But don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourself!
The games main two characters which you play as are Professor Layton himself (no surprise there) and his self-acclaimed apprentice Luke. The main aspect of the game is to go around a town solving puzzles working out the story as you go. The town itself is called St. Mystere and by the name of the town and the name of the game I bet you can guess it’s quite a mysterious/curious village. Throughout the game there are a total of 120 puzzles (in the story mode) however there are extra puzzles in bonuses you can unlock later. Each individual puzzle has a difficulty rating based on picarats. One objective of the game is to try to get as many picarats as possible. Easy puzzles have a rating of about 10 picarats, whilst the hardest can have as much as 70 picarats.
Also throughout the game hidden in bushes, houses etc are hint coins which are vital unless you are an expert at puzzles. In each puzzle there are a total of 3 possible hints to help you but you can only access these hints if you have hint coins available. Obviously because there are a limited amount of hint coins in the game it makes sense to use them sparingly and only use when you have to on harder puzzles. If you get a puzzle wrong you get another try but the number of picarats you receive for getting it right decreases. The puzzles themselves are really quite cool, this game is bound to test even the most experienced puzzles experts at some time. There are brain teasers, logic puzzles and trick questions.
Combine these brilliant puzzles with beautiful graphics and cut-scenes and this becomes a very good game! The graphics are actually quite astounding for a DS game and it shows that the developers Level-5 have truly tried everything to get the best images possible. There are a total of 10 mysteries in the game but the main one is the search for the golden apple, whoever finds it supposedly will get a lot of money. I’m not going to give away any secrets but the ending is quite surprising.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is clearly one of the best games available on the DS at the moment. The game has won 3 awards those being, The best DS visuals, the best family/causal DS game and the best DS game all from the Official Nintendo Magazine Reader Awards 2009 which shows how good a game it is. A brilliant game which deserves a 92% rating.
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