I feel that I’ve been living a bit of a dual life lately – Professor Layton and the Curious Village is my faithful companion that I bring with me, and Mass Effect is my passionate affair in the evening. I tend to play Professor Layton before class and Mass Effect when I have some time to really sit down and enjoy it.

I recently finished Professor Layton after two months of frequent puzzle-solving. I spent nearly 12 hours on it, solving every puzzle (including bonus and downloadable weekly puzzles). I admit to looking up help and using hints on rare occasions, but, for the most part, I solved the 144 puzzles on my own.

Professor Layton is a perfect match of game and platform. The DS is perfect for its point-and-click interface. I had suggested how well this interface would work for a portable game after my experience with Zack and Wiki, and it was fun to see it realized.

The gameplay was flexible enough to allow me to feel satisfied with a play session of three minutes or three hours. I found that most puzzles were relatively short, but for those that required more thought, I could continue thinking about them after I turned off the DS. I would never lose my progress because the game allows you to quit out of any puzzle very easily and to save at almost any point in the game. This made Professor Layton the perfect game to travel with, since I would never get stuck in the middle of something. This also encouraged me to play it more than other DS games because I never had to worry about losing my work.

The game was packed with content that made it really fun for me. There were collectible items that often unlocked more puzzles, such as the inn and painting scraps. The puzzles gave out picarats as a score (and sometimes the collectible pieces as well). The picarats seemed to have little significance other than indicating the difficulty of a puzzle. However, some puzzles with a higher picarat value were easy for me (such as spatial slide puzzles), while others were harder for me (such as some geometry-based puzzles). I found that, if a puzzle was harder for me, an indication of its difficulty would be how many hint coins I had to spend to solve it. Hint coins were another fun collectible item that rewarded me for clicking in many random locations on the screen. I loved the collectible items that encouraged me to fully explore the game.

Aside from the optional collectibles and the short puzzle structure, I found that this game also catered to the portable platform with its audio. The game didn’t require sound to be enjoyed and had subtitles over all the movies. While I am a firm believer in sound enhancing a game experience, a portable game should be designed to be enjoyed with or without sound. When I could have sound, I really enjoyed the music and sound effects, even if some of the characters’ voices were cheesy and had silly accents.

The story of this game was well-paced. Important plot elements were revealed in evenly spaced chapters. The game would give a brief summary of the current events when you loaded a save to get you up to speed. The story was light but engaging because of the many mysteries. I could tell when I was getting close to the end because mysteries kept getting solved. One of the methods of storytelling was short animated movies. They were done in a 2-D animation style that suited the game and its aesthetic quite well. All the movies were short and to the point, so I never felt like I was taken out of the action.

I found very few flaws with this game. I could claim that certain picarat values seemed too high or too low, but a puzzle’s difficulty can be very subjective depending on a person’s intellectual strengths. Another subjective issue I noticed with this game was my dislike of certain character drawings. The character designs looked a little strange to me, but it was all very stylized. After playing more of the game, I got used to it and minded it less. Also, toward the end of the game, the story helps explain some of the characters’ odd appearances.

I was excited to finish Professor Layton, but now I think that I will miss it. I have had some great experiences on the DS, including Elite Beat Agents and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Now I guess I will be searching for the next great DS game, at least until the next Professor Layton game is released.  

It’s been a while since I’ve actually finished a game. Given my academic commitments, a game has to be pretty strong for me to play it through. The fact that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was on DS made it much more accessible and I finished it within a month.

I had mentioned in my previous post about Phantom Hourglass how it was relatively easy. It got a little bit more difficult toward the end. Unfortunately, one of the points where I got stuck was when I was stuck in real life in an airport. Stranded without the internet, I called a friend for help and soon figured out what I had been doing wrong. So much of the path in Phantom Hourglass is so straightforward that I got tripped up on something stupid. I had to blow a hole in the wall, but the spot to bomb was somewhat ambiguous. In every other area of the game, the spots to bomb were much more obvious.

Despite a few frustrating inconsistencies, most of the game was fun. The path to completion was fairly linear and I enjoyed playing through to the end. Gadgets were acquired one by one. I loved the puzzles that challenged me to use various gadgets, such as the mouse-shaped bombs that followed paths I drew on the screen.

Given the limited resources and space on a DS cartridge, Phantom Hourglass seemed to be a strong portable experience. Despite the linear path, I still felt a sense of exploration as I continued to visit new islands. The puzzles were clever and varied. The NPCs had personality and quirky backgrounds.

Phantom Hourglass was not without a few flaws. My main complaint and chief frustration was the necessity of revisiting the same temple over and over again. While I could skip certain parts of the level, much of it could still be repetitive. I absolutely hate sneaking around in games, and I had to continue redoing parts where I would sneak around. Also, the money and treasure seemed unbalanced. I found a lot of treasure, but I always had too much money so I never had to sell anything. The treasure was relatively pointless. I had often gone through a frustrating and finicky salvaging minigame to find most of that treasure, so I felt much of my effort was wasted. Finally, there was a possibility to upgrade some abilities, such as adding a shock to my sword attacks. I upgraded a couple abilities but it didn’t make a noticeable difference.

I really did enjoy playing this game. Each dungeon took about 10-20 minutes, which was convenient for short sessions. (However, you cannot save once in a dungeon.) The ending itself was strong and suitable for the game’s theme and story. I enjoyed the characters and the fact that I was a hero. I would recommend this game to people who like creative, engaging adventure experiences in portable form.  

I’ve been a huge fan of the DS ever since I discovered Elite Beat Agents. The compact size means I have the ability to game between classes, when I’m in line, and when I generally am stuck waiting. It’s fantastic to be able to whip out my DS on a moment's notice and suddenly become immersed in a great game.

Most of the games I’ve played on DS so far have been strong, well-constructed games. Fortunately, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is no exception. I was surprised by its simplicity, as it has a pared down item and inventory system, especially compared to the complicated DS version of the RPG Final Fantasy III. The game moves quickly, as most dungeons can easily be beaten in half an hour or less.

Phantom Hourglass’s simplicity should not be mistaken for that of a children’s game. While it is relatively easy in terms of difficulty, it is a very clever, well-designed experience. Objects such as bombs hardly harm you when you accidentally set them off and deadly falls only remove a small portion of your health. This friendly system encourages exploration and doesn’t punish you for mistakes. The controls are primarily based on touch with the stylus, and with the small screen, this makes it easier to mess up than with a console.

Although I am not opposed to difficult games, the ease of Phantom Hourglass makes it a lot of fun for a more casual, portable experience. Its GameCube predecessor, The Wind Waker, had more complicated puzzles and levels, and I sometimes found myself frustrated. I have only been stumped on a couple of occasions in Phantom Hourglass, and most of that was realizing that I had to interact with my DS in an unconventional way (i.e. blowing into the DS microphone to blow out a candle in the game).

For a DS game, Phantom Hourglass is incredibly immersive. The tasks are given out quickly and there is little lag. I feel as if I am part of the story from the very beginning and that I am actively influencing the world. The game lets you do most of the work on your own. Also, the fact that the default name for the main character is my name (the game takes it from your DS) makes it all the more personal. Suddenly, it’s me who’s saving the day, not a group of heroes like in the RPGs I often play.

I have very few complaints about this game, as I feel that the simplicity and stylized drawings create a charming Zelda interpretation. However, my main complaint would be the simplicity of the combat system. There are two basic attacks, made with a stylus slash and a stylus circle. I rarely use the slash, as I have had a hard time making Link slash the enemy instead of running into its attacks. The circle attack is fairly effective, but doing it too many times in a row makes him dizzy (while cute, it limits this attack).

The touch controls can also be a little bit impractical in one other feature: the map-drawing feature. I find it very handy how you can draw and make notes on your map with the touch screen. Unfortunately, many of these maps are very small on the DS screen, so it becomes hard to write anything legibly. I have resorted to little dots and lines mostly, as anything else is pointless. The game is fairly forgiving in terms of marking things, so it is never a huge problem; it’s just slightly inconvenient not to be able to make intelligible notes.

Overall, I fell that Phantom Hourglass is a very strong game. The simple design makes it accessible, even when I could only play it for two minutes at a time. While the touch controls can be a little bit limiting, the idea of making notes on a map is a nice innovation. I have enjoyed the levels I have played so far and look forward to playing it again soon.