Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Level 5 (2009)

I’ve strung words together before about my issue with brain-teasers. I’m sad to say that things have not improved at all. I still get hung up on them, I still lose sleep over them, and I still allow them to consume me far too much. It’s a character flaw on my part, and I’ve learned to live with it. So what do you think would happen if say, another Professor Layton were to come out?

Yeah, I didn’t really stand a chance.

Synopsis

So the story of Professor Layon and the Diabolical Box starts off pretty much where we ended last time. I assume no more than a month has passed between stories. This isn’t important, I’m just giving context here.

Anyways, the Professor and Luke are sent a message from one of the Professors old friends. Said letter contains the friend’s ramblings about getting his hands on something called the Elysian Box. This box is said to kill any person who opens it. Of course the friend opened said box, and no one has heard from him since.

The Professor and Luke go to investigate, where the find their friend prone on the ground. After some additional investigation, the Professor and Luke make for an elaborate train that their old friend had a ticket to. The story gets decidedly more messed up from that point on.

Oh and of course you are solving puzzles pretty much from the get go.

Mechanics

Very little has changed, in terms of basic game mechanics. You still tap your way around the map looking for hidden Hint Coins (a currency used to buy hints to puzzles that have you flummoxed) and hidden puzzles. You have to solve puzzles to progress throughout the story, and there are points when you need to solve a certain amount of puzzles in order to progress.

There are three mini-games built in which I shall quickly go over:

• Broken Camera: Within the story you are given the task of repairing a camera. This involves finding the pieces, and then assembling them all so that everything fits within the frame of the camera. This isn’t as hard as you’d think so long as you look at it practically. The flash goes in the flash area, the plunger goes in the plunger area, and the lens goes in the lens area.Once you have built the camera, you can take photos of certain areas and have a most fun/infuriating time spotting the three differences between them. Succeeding in this usually results in being able to find yourself a hidden puzzle.
• Fat Hamster: You are given the task of getting a rather obnoxious and impressively obese hamster into shape. You are given a selection of hamster toys throughout the story which you can use to make the hamster run to. Getting him to run to enough things, lowers his weight. When you get him to a rank of 0 (in shape) he returns the favor by obnoxiously pointing out the location of hidden coins on the screens your traverse.
• Magic Tea Set: The magic tea set is given to you by an old woman after completing a set of puzzles from her. The idea of the tea set is to create 12 teas using a variety of ingredients that you pick up along your travels. But what is the point of making tea if not to share them with people?This comes to the second part of the game: helping others. Throughout the game, you will come across people who appear to be sweating. Approaching them at this point will give you a dialogue where you have to give them a tea that will meet their requirements. This can be a total pain in the ass if you screw up, because you’ll have to go back and forth to that screen until they’re sweating again so that you can have another shot.

Other than that, the game plays out pretty much identically as the previous installment. The puzzles will ask you to circle, draw lines, or input a number. Or slide things. Lets not forget the God-forsaken slider puzzles. There are enough of those to make you hate your life, I can assure you.

Oh, and yes, there are secret doors in the Bonus puzzle rooms. No I have not opened any because my girlfriend happened to save over my completed game from the first game. That means no code which means no secret doors for me. I know what’s behind them, but I’m not telling.

Words from the Wise

There isn’t really too much I can give in terms of advice. I’m not going to answer any riddles here, so if you’re looking for those, you’ll have to try somewhere else. Having said that, here are some things you can do to make your life a little easier.

• Tap everywhere. You never know where puzzles or hint coins are located. The hamster won’t show up every time, so be thorough. Beyond that, the hamster won’t point out puzzles, so you’ll have to scrounge for those yourself.
• Think hard before you answer. I can’t tell you how many times I lost points because I was impulsive with my answer. Just take a beat and think about your answer before you click that submit button.
• Don’t be afraid to use hint coins. They’re there for a reason. Sure you may want to man through it and not use any, but that doesn’t make your awesome, it wastes your time on stupid puzzles that could be solved much quicker if you just took a hint.
• Don’t feel bad about cheating. I did it, and I don’t feel bad. There are some puzzles that will blow your mind way open, and as such it will simply be beyond you to answer them. I cheated on most of the sliding puzzles, and one or two math ones. I don’t feel bad because after putting in 1000+ moves into each slider puzzle, I decided to bow out and let the Internet guide me. As for the math questions? Well when you have to make a Quadratic Equation just to figure something out? Go fuck yourself. I signed up for riddles, not math.

Overall

The writing, voice acting, and overall story was fantastically. The puzzles were, overall, enjoyable and gave my brain a workout. Having said that, slider puzzles and complex math questions can all go die in a fire. I’m aware that they’re concepts and cannot die in a physical fire. I can still wish for the concepts to die in a conceptual fire. Other than those, the rest of the puzzles were pretty solid.

The music was well done. Hell I’d go so far as to say that the music in this one was far better than the last game. The artwork was top notch, and it translated perfectly into the videos. Even the CG used in the videos was some of the best I’ve seen when blending CG and animation.

The story was odd, border-line cryptic, and had all the little details that really made the story come together. If you can take the extra time to talk to everyone in the game, you’ll get a much better understanding of what’s going on and gain a much better understanding of the depth to which the writers actually went.

All in all, it’s an enjoy able game and it’s a good way to kill 30 hours of time.

8/10