Not defending the use of drones in Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

I’d worry that throwaway on-rails action sequences at the beginning of the latest mysterious story are becoming a trend in the new Professor Layton games on the 3DS, but it sounds like Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is to be his final adventure, and so that nips that theory in the butt. I kind of don’t believe this is the end for our top hat-wearing detective, but then again, Nintendo loves to ignore beloved characters from time to time. Regardless, these over-the-top sequences are jarring and contradictory to the series’ quirky charm–i.e., everything else–but shooting drones was at least more enjoyable and involving than guiding a horse down Monte d’Or’s winding streets.

But before I get to talking about shooting down drones in a child-friendly, cute and colorful Professor Layton videogame, let me first give y’all the setup. Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is the sixth–and possibly last–adventure. The game opens with our constant prequel trilogy cast of Layton, apprentice Luke, and assistant Emmy Altava heading to the exotic locale of Froenburg, summoned there by Professor Sycamore to assist him in reviving a long-dead civilization. At this point, I’ve played an hour or so, and now know exactly what this Sycamore character wants Layton to help him with, but anything further story details are unknown to me. Unfortunately, some nefarious fellow–who I won’t name–and his goons are also hot on Sycamore’s tail, ready to cause trouble and steal things that aren’t rightfully theirs.

Which leads us to the chase sequence. This time, instead of riding a horse and avoiding barrels, you are piloting the airship Bostonius, in quick pursuit of he-who-will-not-be-named. To slow you down, you-know-who throws out drones to attack your ship, and you must shoot them down. Now, because this is a handheld puzzle game, you’re not pulling left trigger then right trigger to take them out. Instead, you have to figure out which correct drone to shoot through a puzzle, and you shoot them by dragging the cursor over the selected one and tapping on the touchscreen. Some sections ask you to select the one unlike the others, and another might have you tapping them in a specific order. I failed a few parts, too, but the action kept going, so this seems like just fodder, something to do during an action scene instead of simply watching a beautifully animated cutscene. In truth, I’d prefer the latter.

But really now, there’s just something so charming and comforting about these games to me that I can deal with a silly throwaway tapping sequence. The music is bouncy and less like Chrono Cross this time around, and I’ve gotten so used to the 3D models now and Layton and Luke blinking that I don’t even remember how it used to be. I also love the menus and everything in Layton’s trunk and each puzzle, which I never rush through, even if I can guess the answer right away. I guess I’m trying to savor each second.

And just like with Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, along with all the puzzles found in the main game, you can also connect to the Nintendo Network in order to download additional puzzles. For a whole year. These puzzles are made available weekly for a year following release, with seven puzzles made available each week; there’s some new categories to learn, as well as a few repeats from the previous edition. I am not excited to the see “bounce the ghost light off the mirrors” puzzles back for another swing.

So yeah, I’m excited to see more of the story unfold, so long as there are no more pointless action sequences wedged between intelligent sleuthing and being thorough on every scene for hidden hint coins and special items. I suspect I’ll even be sad to see it all end.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #36 – Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

A casino town
Plagued by dark, dire miracles
Make way for Layton

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

Puzzling my way through the City of Miracles

When the time came to buy Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask last Sunday, I literally said the following to the GameStop guy:

“Hi, I need a copy of Sticker Star and the new Layton game, whatever it is called. The newest one.”

He laughed. I laughed in return, and we had a brief comment or two about how it is pretty hard to keep these games in line, seeing as they’ve come out almost yearly since that first magical gem of Curious Village hit the Nintendo DS and kind of blur together in the end. Granted, I still need to experience the other two titles from the original trilogy–Diabolical Box and Unwound Future–but I absolutely loved The Last Specter and its built-in mini-game, and so I was highly interested in seeing how Layton’s first foray into the 3D realm would go. So far, it’s been strange.

First, the song that plays on the main menu screen is pretty dang close to “Time’s Scar” from Chrono Cross. I mean, all it is basically missing is some sharp violin action and a kick to the pants about a minute in, but that soft, slow build sounds the same in both tunes. Pretty weird. Not sure who did the music for Miracle Mask, but either they are the same person from Chrono Cross or just a big fan that doesn’t know the meaning of encroaching.

After that, it’s a lackadaisical climb up as the story starts, with very few puzzles and an odd action element to boot. Professor Layton, Emmy, and Luke have just arrived at the fictional city of Monte d’Or, sometimes referred to as the City of Miracles, driven there by a vague letter requesting their help. They arrive just at the same time a carnival of sorts is happening. Alas, that bit of pomp and parade gets ruined when the Masked Gentlemen shows up and turns people into stone before vanishing. Who is this Masked Gentleman? No idea. Through the usual investigation methods and a dip back in time, Professor Layton and company will try to unravel it all.

The Professor Layton games have always been about two things–story and puzzles–and balancing them properly. That said, the beginning of Miracle Mask fails hard, giving us one puzzle over a stretch of twenty-five to thirty minutes, and then throwing a decidedly odd chase segment at us. Okay, let me gripe about that part. You are chasing after the winged Masked Gentleman, riding horseback below. The game switches from a cutscene to a third-person perspective, with Layton on a horse, charging forward down Monte d’Or’s streets “on rails.” You can select a new path now and then by sliding the stylus left or right, and picking up carrots allows your horse to have the strength to straight up bust through barrels. This goes on for a minute or two, and then it just ends. It’s a bizarre gameplay section that I’ve never seen before, at least not in Curious Village or Last Specter. It felt out of place and rightly so–also, a revealed plot point later makes this whole happening quite disturbing, especially for those of you with horse fetishes.

And lastly, some comments on the part that truly doesn’t matter–but at the same time, totally does: the graphics. We’re on the Nintendo 3DS here, and that means 3D models. More depth and layers and effects to hit you between the eyes, like Layton pointing at you when you do a good job. Though, seeing how nice the diorama look turns out for Paper Mario: Sticker Star, it seems unnecessary for Level 5 to switch everyone over from that wonderful Studio Ghibli 2D art to full polygons. They look creepy, and maybe for reasons I can’t say; it’s possible I’m just not used to seeing these characters defined like so, but something about Luke’s wide-eyed expressions really bothers me. You too, probably. But yeah, it’s a little hard to swallow at first, especially the way some of the characters animate, like the clowns and Nanna Gram.

Otherwise, I’m enjoying it mildly. Tara and I are playing this together slowly as I juggle Sticker Star and Pokemon White 2, and working out puzzle solutions together is fun, and the second brainpower is sometimes needed. The mini-games from the trunk look okay, though I’m not really interested in raising a talking bunny, but the shop and moving robot are good brainteasers. Plus, by hopping onto WiFi, one can download a bonus puzzle a day for the next year, which will definitely keep us busy long after this Masked Gentleman is unmasked. Will report back if there’s any more odd gameplay elements; I really hope not.

Games Completed in 2011, #37 – Professor Layton and the Last Specter

I bought Professor Layton and the Last Specter back in October 2011 and had to almost immediately give it over to my wife, after her curious levels reached a brand new high. She ate up the game and then had to keep quiet as I finished my playthrough, which I did slowly and in small pieces. Not my fault. Some other heavy-hitters came out around the same time, as well as my continued quest to beat Chrono Trigger. Plus, that little mini-RPG thing London Life was fairly distracting. But I did see it through the end, solving the mystery of the ravenous specter and the disquieted town of Misthallery.

In Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which is set before the other games in the franchise, Hershel Layton and his new assistant Emmy Altava head off to Misthallery after receiving a concerning letter from an old friend. Seems like a mysterious monster–a specter, if the townsfolk are to be believed–is rampaging through the town at night. There, they meet a young boy who is able to predict where and when the specter will strike next. And the plot gets more complicated–and spoilery–after that, so there’s my summary. You wanna know more? Play the game, you puzzlin’ fool.

Story-wise, just like Professor Layton and the Curious Village, twists and turns aplenty. But this time, things get sadder. Even made my wife cry. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t cry, but can understand why she did; it’s like, you know what’s going to happen to your equestrian partner in Shadow of the Colossus, you can feel it in your gut from the very beginning, and then you still feel sick and shocked when the moment hits. There was some confusion towards the end of the game, where a revealed character implies he already knows Layton intimately, but maybe that’s a detail I’m missing from not playing games #2 and #3. Or it’s just a big tease to come for further prequels. Either way, whatever. Mystery solved, new friends acquired, and puzzle skills enhanced by +15.

As it is a Professor Layton and the Adjective Noun title, all is where it should be: puzzles, high quality animated cutscenes, minigames, hidden hint coins, so much dang charm, oh so creepy characters, and infectious music. I played Professor Layton and the Curious Village right when it released, but never touched the other two games, putting a span of a few years between my first adventure and this new one. Surprisingly, not much has changed–and that’s okay. It was a little like going home.

As for the minigames, unfortunately, they are not as much fun as the ones in Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Maybe the inclusion of a massive minigame–Professor Layton’s London Life–is to blame. What we have is the following:

• Miracle Fish: Bouncing fish around an underwater room, trying to collect a number of  bubbles in a locked amount of time. Trial and error is ultimately one way to solve these, though a few of them are extremely tricky. I did the majority of them.
• Miniature Train: Players must lay out train tracks on game boards of increasing difficulty that will allow a toy train to go from a starting point to the finish line while passing through every station on the board. These were too frustrating to be fun, so I did the first one and never went back.
• Puppet Theatre: A group of puppets perform short plays, and players must help them fill in the blanks with words they collect during the main game. I really enjoyed doing these and trying out different phrases in hopes of getting it right. The plays themselves are cute and down in a nice art style.

The puzzles in Professor Layton and the Last Specter range from super easy to super hard, with the super easy ones sometimes being a mindf*ck in the way that it will seem so easy that you will start second-guessing yourself. Boo to that. But the game’s pacing and charm are top-notch, and I loved being able to play for a half hour before bed, knocking out a few puzzles and progressing the story, but being able to stop for the night and pick it up the next day. You always get a summary of what’s been happening, and if you ever get really lost, you can re-read Layton’s journal for extremely detailed retellings.

I am looking forward to the first iteration of Layton on the 3DS, as well as maybe picking up the other two–hopefully for cheap–over the year for when I need a little more puzzlin’ in my life.