I picked up Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton and the Curi­ous Vil­lage the other day for the Nin­tendo DS.  It is a great game that I am really enjoy­ing.  I almost hate to admit it, but Penny Arcade’s comic com­men­tary on the game is pretty darn accu­rate.  As much as I love puz­zles, a good major­ity of them seemed a lit­tle forced into a storyline.

While play­ing, I found myself con­stantly think­ing back to Per­plex City, and the puzzle-centric nature of it.  In fact, entelein and I had a lit­tle online con­ver­sa­tion about it this morn­ing.  I have to agree with her that Lay­ton has a much more friendly, human, and whim­si­cal feel to it.  Although to me, the puz­zles seem a bit forced.  In PXC, the rea­son­ing and back­story for the puz­zles was well thought-out and they made great sense in con­text, but the human touch some­times felt a lit­tle pushed aside, replaced by a lit­tle elit­ism, which was some­times off-putting.

Regard­less of the believ­abil­ity of the frame­work sur­round­ing the puz­zles in Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton, I’m still get­ting a great deal of enjoy­ment out of it.  That and Puz­zle Quest are the only two DS games I’m play­ing any­more.  If/when I fin­ish Puz­zle Quest, I think it will have some good replay value–especially with the “instant quest” mode.  I am not sure about Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton, but given the WiFi puzzle-a-week and the extra bonus mate­ri­als unlocked as you play, I have high hopes.

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Tagged as: ds, nintendo, professorlayton