The Diabolical Puzzles of Professor Layton
A nice long car ride to Vermont as well as a couple recent subway rides finally gave me the time I needed to finish the new Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box on Nintendo DS. It’s as good, if not better, than Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I know what you’re thinking: “But I saw those TV commercials of women in their 30’s playing it and thinking really hard and the game looked like absolutely no fun at all.” I know. But what the marketing people got wrong, the game designers got right.
Professor Layton and his trusty sidekick, Luke, are back, and now they’re investigating the mysterious death of a professor friend of theirs, who may have opened the Elysian Box, a box that is rumored to bring the instant death of anyone that opens it. Diabolical, huh? The only clue they have to go on is a train ticket on the Molentary Express, and the train is always a wonderful location for a mystery. When the train arrives at the mysterious town of Folsense, the plot thickens with talk of vampires. Though the cut scenes are often ridiculously long, they’re so beautifully animated that it’s hard to care. Also, Professor Layton has gotten considerably more dashing in this version. I’d like to see a movie version where he’s played by a young Harrison Ford.
The puzzles are just as fun as they were in Curious Village. There’s such a nice mix of logic, math, visual, and language puzzles, that there’s a little something there for every kind of thinker. As with the last one, I think tweens and older kids will have lots of fun with it, but the whole family should get in on the action to solve the tough puzzles. What’s hard for one person might be a piece of cake for another. Check out this game trailer, which does a much better job than the TV commercials for showing the beauty and fun of this game.
On Amazon: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
