Sunday, April 21, 2013

Professor Layton and the Curious Village



GENRE: Puzzle Adventure
PLATFORM: Nintendo DS
DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER: Level-5, Nintendo
DIRECTOR: Tatsuya Shinkai
PRODUCER: Akihiro Hino
Images by RPGFan and Amazon.com




SHOPPING:
All Professor Layton and the Curious Village games and merchandise
Amazon.com Description:
In Professor Layton and the Curious Village, you’ll tackle over 130 puzzles as you unravel the mysteries of the village. Puzzles range from mazes and riddles to logic and sliding puzzles. Touch Screen controls make working through puzzles fun for players of all skill levels, and new puzzles are available weekly for download via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Fully voiced animated scenes bring the story to life, while the eccentric villagers and the hand-drawn art provide a charm that appeals to gamers and non-gamers alike. Only playable on Nintendo DS systems.

There's a reason why there's an age limit for IQ tests. >>> by skysenshi
It took me a while to play Professor Layton but it was only because I'm not too fond of the art. But just like Lunar: Silver Star Story, a game I did not initially want to play for the same reason, I found myself immensely enjoying Layton despite its aesthetics. Later, the very same aesthetics that turned me off started growing on me.

Thing is, some of the puzzles in Professor Layton and the Curious Village are a bit...let's just say, if you belong to a certain field, you will find yourself questioning the validity of the puzzles. There are times when you'd find yourself overthinking when the answer is the simplest of solutions. The math problems throw me off nearly most of the time, and then I'd scream, "This is fake math!"

I'm also a little wary of math problems involving people. For regular IQ tests, the solutions seem easy but if you were immersed in Human-Computer Interaction theories, you would always count for fatigue and the differences in skill level of every individual. This is also the basic reason why IQ tests should have an age limit. The formula for IQ is: (Mental Age / Chronological Age) x 100. This simply means that for many people, their IQ points decrease as they grow older. Without looking at the formula, however, one must realize that after high school, people begin to specialize. One word may mean differently to people belonging to various fields. And as I mentioned, people who have studied Human-Computer Interaction would find a lot of oversimplification in math questions about human abilities. That was my only major complaint about Professor Layton's puzzles.

A friend of mine assured me that many of these issues have been fixed in later installations of the series and this makes me look forward to playing them. Just a bit of a warning: If you're trying to play DS games to make yourself sleepy, keep away from this game. There were times I'd be awake all night because I can't stop myself from solving the puzzles (I love the visual ones that require abstract reasoning) or from trying to find out what was really going on in the Curious Village! It was that immersive.

Oh and yeah! Check out Amazon.com's developer interview with Akihiro Hino!

PLAYER STATUS:
DIFFICULTY: Easy - Difficult
COMPLETION TIME: 8:41 hours
HIGHEST LEVEL ACHIEVED: Solved 84 puzzles before the ending (finished everything else after the ending).
RATINGS: Gameplay 10; Battle N/A; Story 9; Visuals 6; Characters 9; Sounds 7; Replay Value 8

No comments:

Post a Comment

Copyright 1997 - 2010. The Kraiders Otaku Fridge. All content, except screenshots, belong to the webmaster.