Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Professor Layton and the Curious Village starts with Professor Layton and his self appointed apprentice responding to the last will and testament of the Baron Reinhoff in the small town of St. Mystere.  You would think that finding a town would be a piece of cake, but apparently they have never heard of Mapquest since you have to solve a puzzle to even decipher the map to the town.

This sets the stage for the rest of the game.  You can't do anything without solving a puzzle first.  This is a good thing.  The puzzles are varied in type, but many are variations on puzzles we have been solving forever.  They range from math style puzzles, to moving block puzzles, to spatial relations puzzles.  There are 120 different puzzles in the game (you don't have to solve them all to complete the storyline) and only a few are duplicate puzzle styles.  All of them are fairly entertaining.  A few rely on word tricks instead of actual puzzling, but that is a valid form of puzzle.  It's just not my favorite.

Breaking up the puzzling is a decent storyline.  It isn't the greatest piece of writing, but like all good mysteries there is a twist.  Nothing earth shattering, but a twist just the same.  There are several very well done cut-scenes to move the story along.  The last cut-scene has a bit of artifacting at points, but most of the others look very good with animation worthy of any Saturday morning cartoon.

Collectors will enjoy the fact that along the way you have the opportunity to pick up pieces to a painting, parts to a gizmo, and furniture for your heroes rooms at the in.  Certain puzzles drop collectables so to you'll have to finish all of the puzzles to get everything.

The game isn't terribly long, but it's not exactly short either.  It really depends on how fast you can solve the puzzles.  I took just over 10 hours from start to credits, solving 98 of 120 puzzles.  I'm a puzzle fiend, though.  I love them and have solved many in my life.  Most of these puzzles I had seen varieties of over the years, so I knew the tricks they were looking for if not the actual answer.  You may take a bit longer to get to the end, depending on your exposure to the different puzzle styles.

I am so glad I ran across this game.  It was a great distraction from the epic games I am in the process of playing on my 360, and since it was a puzzle game it was right up my alley.  Once I started playing, I ignored all other games to play through it.  I can't come up with a better endorsement than that.  This could very well be a sleeper hit for the DS.