Review: Professor Layton and the Lost Future

Professor Layton returns with more of the very good same in this puzzle adventure

Format: DS Dev: Level-5 Pub: Nintendo Out: 22/10/10 Players: 1

There’s a wide range of puzzle titles for the Nintendo DS, so many that it looks like it has really become a thinking person’s console of choice. The only problem is: there’s too much choice. With puzzlers ranging from Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training to the newly popular Scribblenauts series, it seems more and more difficult to make a distinction and pick the best game to rack your brain over on the train ride home. Rest assured that Professor Layton and the Lost Future is more than capable of standing out from this crowd and definitely delivers a great puzzler worth your money.

Professor Layton is donning his gentlemen’s top hat in the third title of the series and remains on form with another truly top-notch game. The formula is largely unchanged in the Lost Future. You guide Professor Layton and his adventurous young apprentice Luke through various 2D environments, interacting with objects to find puzzles and progress to investigate more of the game’s big mysteries. Exploring is largely reminiscent of classic point-and-click adventure games. Tapping the screen to inspect objects or talk to people works well and discovering hidden hint coins and puzzles in the maps is surprisingly fun.

The most important aspect of the game, however, is the puzzle challenges. The game finds any excuse to throw a puzzle your way and they are largely unrelated to the story of the game, but with the amount of variety on offer, it’s not really a problem. It’s hard to comment on the puzzles in the game as they are so diverse. They tend to suit everyone’s preferences at some point, though they generally revolve around lateral thinking challenges, word puzzles, maths problems and piece-sliding tasks. The puzzles vary heavily in difficulty throughout the game with a steady incline towards the more challenging later chapters. There is a definite frustration factor with a lot of the harder puzzles, but you’ll never find yourself unable to progress because the game allows you to buy puzzle hints for hint coins that you’ll find incredibly easily throughout the game.

The game’s ability to deliver over 150 fresh puzzles will keep you coming back for more. The overarching mystery and twists in the game’s plot work excellently and do a great job of balancing out the game’s puzzles with exciting, often funny, storytelling. Professor Layton has rapidly become one of my favourite video game characters in recent years, as it’s hard not to love his charmingly smart, gentlemen ways and he is truly a breath of fresh air from the arrogant, hero character archetype that is massively overused these days. Professor Layton and the Lost Future will feel massively familiar to those who have played the first two games. It really is more of the same for the third title in the Professor Layton series, but when the games are this charming and inventive it’s very difficult to say that’s a bad thing.

Dan Key

Tags: handheld, level-5, nintendo, professor layton, puzzle