The Shrine

I went over to the old 1up in order to shuffle through their other news stories after reading the thread on the Jaffe throwdown. During the mandatory advertisement before the startup of the site, the ad was for professor layton! Not the mustachioed NDP leader canadians know and are confused about, but the japanese adventure/mystery/amazing game! I am pretty darn excited to see this, and it also gives me a good excuse to take a break from my homework to post something. Hazzah!

I am curious about the game. Do we know if it's any good or not? The art design is awesome.

Andrew, Killer Bee wrote:I am curious about the game. Do we know if it's any good or not? The art design is awesome.

We know it's popular as fuck in Japan. Supposed to be pretty brilliant and fun gameplay too

Developed by Level 5? I'll certainly check it out, given how much I liked Jeanne D'Arc (although I thought it did get lame toward the end).

Played a bit of EBA today, which was fun. Think I'll come back to that randomly. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to get started on Hotel Dusk or Phoenix Wright.

http://ds.ign.com/objects/859/859513.html

It has been getting a decent amount of coverage on IGN. It is the first game of a trilogy (so far). It reminds me of Tin Tin so far, I think fans of Phoenix Wright will enjoy it just based on the trailers so far.

Black Lotus wrote:Played a bit of EBA today, which was fun. Think I'll come back to that randomly. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to get started on Hotel Dusk or Phoenix Wright.

I just started Hotel Dusk like 20 minutes ago =P

Hotel Dusk! I still haven't finished it. A little too slow for my taste.

Hotel Dusk was very fun. I definitely prefer the Phoenix Wright games, but HD was a nice change of pace. The atmosphere of the game is really cool and I loved the art style. The story starts to get really interesting so it was worth the play through.

Well the story BETTER start getting interesting soon. I just finished chapter one and while I enjoyed it, I get the feeling the game's going to be one big fetch quest. And it is a little slow.

You're right, though. Very cool atmosphere and art.

But tell me, do you get to leave the hotel at some point?

Cing's games are fairly good so far. I found their first DS attempt, Trace Memory, to be quite interesting. Despite being fairly short and difficult at times, I really did enjoy the puzzles within the game.

The general nature of an adventure game is that it is one giant fetch quest at its core. Though these become adventure games by adding various sorts of obstacles and story elements. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it, no context and nothing very interesting. The right way are games like Castlevania (most of them), Zelda (most of them), Phoenix Wright, and games of that sort. The wrong way is Zelda Twilight Princess's method (in other words, no context or interesting design), that really hurt my enjoyment of the overall game.

Black Lotus wrote:Well the story BETTER start getting interesting soon. I just finished chapter one and while I enjoyed it, I get the feeling the game's going to be one big fetch quest. And it is a little slow.

You're right, though. Very cool atmosphere and art.

But tell me, do you get to leave the hotel at some point?

No, you never leave. You get to go into some of the other areas, but that's about it. It was kind of a fetch quest, tbh. I really liked the main character and the way he never took crap from anyone. haha That got me through it.

Once puzzle pieces start falling into place, it gets a lot better.

Dutch wrote:The general nature of an adventure game is that it is one giant fetch quest at its core.

Indeed this is the truth. I didn't think about that until after I wrote it. Then again, I can't recall the last pure point-and-click-type adventure game I played.

Dutch wrote:The wrong way is Zelda Twilight Princess's method (in other words, no context or interesting design), that really hurt my enjoyment of the overall game.

Doomed to opposite opinions. TP was probably my favorite Zelda so far.

I found Twilight Princess had some cool improvements:

Positives: World size, Riding, swordplay, controls.

But I found it also did a lot of things worse than the other 3 Zelda games: sparse population, those fetch quests to get into half the dungeons, dungeon design. Boss battles were cool as always, but I still find the Ocarina of Time ending battle to be the most epic.



On the topic of Professor Layton, the art style reminds me of the Adventures of Tintin, which is quite cool. Speaking of Tintin, Spielberg and Peter Jackson are working on a WETA produced theatrical trilogy. They are both directing and producing.

<a href="http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3166174">1UP review!</a> Favourable!

I love the idea of the downloadable puzzles. They've already done a year straight in Japan of weekly downloads and they've already announced the first level for next week here. Hopefully we'll get all of the puzzles they got

8 by IGN and a 9 by Gamespot. Note that IGN DS's scoring system is more demanding than other sites, an 8 from them is worth a 9 elsewhere.

Dutch wrote:an 8 from them is worth a 9 elsewhere.

then what's an IGN 10 worth elsewhere?

bovine wrote:

Dutch wrote:an 8 from them is worth a 9 elsewhere.

then what's an IGN 10 worth elsewhere?

IGN DS hasn't scored a 10 before. Though I would say that a lot of sites give away 10's too freely, so a 10 isn';t much of a statement.

bovine wrote:then what's an IGN 10 worth elsewhere?

more on topic, it's seriously a good game with fun puzzles.

bovine wrote:more on topic, it's seriously a good game with fun puzzles.

Penny Arcade had a comic about it:

Kupek wrote:

bovine wrote:then what's an IGN 10 worth elsewhere?

Guitar Hero has really revived that scene, hasn't it?

Really enjoying the Layton so far.

Just picked this baby up and it is quite the awesome.

The puzzles are all fun and very unique. Mixing it into a world where you have mysteries to solve and other side missions to accomplish is great.

Lox wrote:Just picked this baby up and it is quite the awesome.

The puzzles are all fun and very unique. Mixing it into a world where you have mysteries to solve and other side missions to accomplish is great.

Sounds like any computer adventure game... space quest, monkey island, DotT... i like this genre and would like to see more on handhelds and other systems.