leopardsqueezy's Profile

I must confess, I'm not a big fan of fighting, confrontation, war, and all of that nasty business - in real life, of course. In games though, it's completely different. In games, war and fighting is usually a prerequisite to any kind of success - this concept, in turn, always makes me think that teams who develop games like Professor Layton are actually rather brave.
Welcome to a world where all problems and differences of opinion can be sorted out with a good lateral-thinking puzzle and a nice cup of herbal tea.

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (aka The Diabolical Box) is pretty much the same as the last game, The Curious Village. There's a strange scenario, hints of menace and ancient evil, and it's up to Layton and his prepubescent sidekick, Luke, to sort it out. In this episode, you will be working on the murder of an old colleague, and a relic known as the Elysian Box, which supposedly causes people to die ever so slightly when they open it.

The game mechanics are a nice 'n simple point-and-click adventure type affair. You tap with your stylus on items or areas of curiosity, and things happen - you'll move to new areas, discussions with people will open up, new puzzles may kick in, and so on. Its very accessible.

But this isn't a shallow game though, not by any means. And nor is it for kids (unless the kids in question are Einsteinian prodigies), regardless of its slightly cheesy graphics and delivery (though the whole game does have a high level of polish and great production). If anything, it is very much a "grown-ups" title; many of the 150+ puzzles you can potentially encounter are pretty vicious, and some are just downright sadistically hard - and I'm not, like, a complete retard or something, not like that Susan Boyle (right Paul?). In spite of the difficulty, it is strangely compelling to play, and I seem to have quite a challenge putting it down.

The puzzles revolve around the usual suspects, such as maths, chess, patterns, logic, spot-the-difference, creative thinking, world times, and loadsa others. The whole game is delivered in distinctively-drawn anime, with a surprisingly large amount of well-spoken voiceovers, and inspired music.

The mighty DS is kind of a repository for this kind of game, and I reckon it's the system's specialty. You do have to actually like puzzle games to enjoy it any, but if you do, its a solid title. Recommend it.