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Tuesday 4 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
In my second run of Professor Layton, the same game design plagued my character. However, I was getting more and more frusterated by each puzzle that came up. I almost always had to use at least one hint in order to solve it, which really just makes me, the player, feel more stupid. However, there is a great sense of completion and success whenever I can solve a puzzle without using any hints.
So far the narrative in Professor Layton has been pretty boring. Some lady lost her cat, and now I'm being forced to chase it. Along the way, I find a bunch of people who have seen it, but will only tell me where the cat is once I solve one of their ridiculous puzzles. I hope the story progresses in a more intense way, or I may not be able to remain optimistic about this game.
DESIGN
Design in this game is extremely innovative. The overworld is simple enough I'm sure so that the programmers did not have to much work, but it also makes the gameplay extremely easygoing for the player. Each puzzle has its own unique feel to it, which makes it a lot more like a wario ware game than an actual puzzle game.
Level design is very mist like. You are given a drawn background and must choose which directiont to go. It has no character movement, other than that, and is given to us in a kind of first person camera mode. This makes the game very easy to navigate, and also easy to find new puzzles.
Rewards in this game are very minimal so far. There are promises of more luxurious rewards once you progress further into the game, however I have not been able to see any large rewards 2 hours into it. Every now and then, for clicking all over the screen, I find a bonus coin which can be used to give me hints in the game, but it sometimes seems like thats a lame way to give out coins. The game is great so far, as a Nintendo DS game, and works well on the console as something that someone can just pick up and go, but for the long haul, it certainly doesn't pay off.
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