That said, the new Professor Layton came with a veritable feast of new mini-games, new puzzles, and one of the best story-lines in a game I’ve played in the last while. As a result, the newest addition to the series (Professor Layton and the Unwound Future) ends up being the best of the series (thus far).

Synopsis

The Unwound Future takes place after the events from the Diabolical Box. Layton and Luke have been invited, somewhat at random, to a scientific demonstration of an apparent time-machine. Things go south (as all preludes in this series do), and days later you get a letter from Luke that has a posting date from 10 years in the future. Now since Layton has conquered ghosts, missing peoples, phantom trains, and imaginary clockwork people, solving a temporal mystery just seems the next logical step.

Luke and Layton follow the instructions, and end up at a mysterious clock shop (surprise, surprise). When brought into the back of the shop, a giant clock awaits them. This is, apparently, a time machine, and before they can think it through, the shop owner throws the switch and Luke and Layton are thrown into the future. Here they notice the changes (and similarities) between them. Eventually they run into Future Luke, and things just get weirder.

As the story unfolds, you find out that the scientist from the demonstration and Layton have some shared past. Namely, they went to the same school, and happened to be in love with the same girl: Claire. The scientist (Dimitri, in case you’re wondering) at first seems to be out to get Layton due to Layton’s winning the affections of Claire. Things, though, are not what they seem. As the story progresses, things get well messed up, and it really does take right up to the 11th hour for everything to come to light.

It ends with, in my opinion, one of the saddest endings I have ever witnessed on the DS. Possibly one of the saddest endings on any Nintendo title that I’ve played. Things are tied up well, if not nicely, and you’re not really left with any questions other than ‘WHY DID THEY JUST DO THAT TO ME?” I was honestly more upset than I thought possible, given the game I was playing. I didn’t sob or anything, but it did move me.

Mechanics

The core mechanics of the game have been left pretty much unchanged. New faces, new places, but the environmental stuff hasn’t moved on much. It doesn’t really need to, either. They got it right the first time, so there’s not much of a need to change it. Tap everywhere to find puzzles and/or hint coins. Solve said puzzles with or without the help of said hint coins. Move on.

The mini-games have changed again. You now get a toy car game, a parrot-guiding game, and the sticker-book game. The toy car game is similar to the hamster game from the last Professor Layon, with a few obvious changes (water, comes to mind). The sticker-book game is fun because you have to put the correct stickers in the correct spots on the page. When this is done, you get to read the whole story. It’s a bit juvenile, but entertaining.

Then there is the parrot game. I hate the parrot game. I hate it more than slider puzzles, and I really hate slider puzzles. The idea is to draw ropes from peg to peg in order to help the parrot (who can only seem to hop short distances) get to end flag before the timer runs down. I’m just going to say right now: I cheated. I don’t even feel bad about it. Know why? because I spent hours and hours trying to legitimately figure the damned parrot puzzles out, and to no avail. Well screw that noise, I have better things to do (shutup I do so) than to run the same parrot simulation over and over and over and over and over and motherfucking over.

The Highs

The laytest installment (see what I did there?) comes with a heaping dose of wonderfully animated cut-scenes, which are pretty much par for the course by this point. The music is wonderful (the alteration of the main/professors theme is sublime) and as goes well with both the puzzles and the story points. Some new items have been added to the score selection, though the puzzle theme remains just as ponderous as it always was.

A special shout-out has to be made here for the grace in which the Professor’s history is handled. While I enjoyed the previous two stories for being entertaining, the Unwound Future is the first in the series that actually made me care about any of the characters. Even Luke, who in many cases I find to be grating, was given a lot more … Luke-ness. That’s a good thing, surprisingly. They really went the extra mile to make the characters mean something more to you than simple puzzle gods, and it shows.

The Lows

Slider puzzles make a shining return in the latest installment, which of course means that I stared at the DS’ screens for a while, scowling in hate until my fail-safe method of random sliding paid off. On top of that, the writers really went out of their way to include more utterly ambiguous riddles. I’m talking about the kind of riddles that legitimately have more than one answer (which makes them shit riddles to begin with) but will only accept whatever cryptic answer they keep locked up in their brain-can. Also, there were a small number of puzzles that looked eerily familiar to past Professor Layton puzzles. I worry that they may be running out of puzzles for the series. Hopefully not.

I also have to say that one of the lows was the feeling of utter depression I got upon finishing the game. I could spoil the ending for you (though I will not) and ruin your day, but suffice it to say that it really struck a chord for me. The only thing that makes a depressing ending worse though, is an unnecessarily depressing ending. They didn’t need to do what they did,  but I guess they felt that the best ending to a light-hearted puzzle game would be to break everyones heart. Repeatedly.

Woe upon the parents who buy this game for their 11 year old daughter, only to have her run into their room, sobbing uncontrollably.

Overall

A great addition to the Professor Layton series, and what will probably go down as my favorite. That is of course until this comes out, and I am forced to purchase a 3DS just to play it.

Regardless, it’s a great title, if not a bit depressing at the end, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series. I would suggest picking up the previous two if you’re new to the series because it will allow you to appreciate Unwound Future so much more.

9/10

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