Here’s an example of my reviewing skills:
Overview
The distinguished Professor Layton and his young sidekick Luke are back with another puzzle-filled adventure in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, available on the Nintendo DS from September 25th.
Review
Game Plot
In this sequel to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, our astute archaeologist encounters a new mystery surrounding an artefact known as the Elysian Box, which is said to kill anyone that opens it. Layton learns about this box from his former mentor Dr Schrader, who the professor later discovers dead.
Enter some characters from the Curious Village: the morose Inspector Chelmey arrives to investigate the suspicious death and forbids Layton from meddling in his case. However, the professor finds a clue prompting him to take a trip on the Molentary Express train to carry out his own investigation. He and Luke, with Flora (another returning character) tagging along, have a lot of puzzles to solve to unravel the connections between the train, some mysterious villages and the Elysian Box before another person falls victim to its curse.
Game Play
If, like me, you’re a fan of the original game, then you’ll love this sequel just as much. The reason being that very little has changed in the game play. Instead of wandering around one village, this time the professor and Luke will explore a number of different locations. In each scene the same format applies: you tap on objects to find puzzles and hint coins and on people to talk to them and get more puzzles.
The Diabolical Box grabs you right from the beginning by using a lot more cut scenes and voice acting than the previous game. The plot isn’t impossible to figure out as you work through the game but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable, even if you haven’t played Curious Village. Although, seasoned players will enjoy the reference to Layton and Luke’s questionable relationship.
What’s new in this game can be found in the professor’s trunk. In here you can save your progress, read the professor’s journal entries, check which mysteries you have solved and see which puzzles you’ve completed in the puzzle index – the same as in Curious Village. But you will also find three new mini games: the camera, hamster and tea set games. These replace the inn and painting games from Curious Village. The camera game requires you to collect pieces to fix a broken camera. You can place these pieces inside the camera and also revolve them. This new revolve function is also used to add an extra dimension in some of the puzzles. The hamster game involves Luke trying to trim down a rotund rodent and the herb tea game lets you become a master tea brewer. The pieces you need to play these games are given as rewards for completing puzzles, along with the picarats you’ll need to unlock the bonus section of the game.
The puzzles in the Diabolical Box seem to be more difficult than in Curious Village (although this could just be me being out of practice). There are a good variety of puzzles including logic and reasoning, sliding puzzles, numeric problems and a frustrating abundance of spatial ability tests. Prepare to wrack your brains and be exasperated when you hear Luke exclaim, ‘Looks like I bodged that one!’ Happily a new feature on the puzzles makes them a tad easier to solve. A memo button appears on the right of the screen which, when tapped, produces a greyed-out layer over the puzzle for sketching on. This useful little function means you can work out the answer to puzzles (and even trace your way out of mazes). There are also the hint coins that appeared in the original game to help you get clues for solving puzzles.
As in the Curious Village, once you have completed all the puzzles in the game (138 of them) as well as the mini games you will unlock 15 puzzles in the bonus section. There are also the downloadable puzzles you can get by using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and ‘The Hidden Door’, which you can only get hold of by finding a unique code in both Curious Village and Diabolical Box – this contains artwork of the games’ characters.
Verdict:
If it ain’t broke… this sequel is every bit as fun, frustrating and absorbing as its predecessor. It’s kept its beautiful graphics, entertaining storyline and near-impossible puzzles while incorporating a few new and very welcome features. It gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from this reviewer.
So I’ve finally managed to sort out my domain names, I actually have two, which is rather greedy. But now if you type in either pagemaya.com or pagemaya.net your gaze will be directed to this lovely site.
Managed to lose a year’s worth of posts through changing my domain name and generally being a noob. Lacking time to write new posts. Fail.
In the beginning, when God was creating stuff, he said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good.
