Professor Layton and the Spectres Call review
Review of the puzzling Professor Layton and the Spectres Call video game for the Nintendo DS rated 8 out of 10
Tagged with: Professor Layton
Reviewed on by Gamesweasel
In Professor Layton’s latest adventure not only do you solve the usual assortment of puzzles but also learn how Layton met his boy assistant Luke and travel with female assistant Emmy. Once again the story also has a seemingly supernatural tone as you investigate the town of Misthallery and its unfortunate curse of a giant spectre immerging from the fog and destroying buildings. If you’ve enjoyed the previous Professor Layton games you’re sure to like this too, although you will get a strong sense of deja-vu as nothing’s really changed apart from a few more animated cut-scenes, slightly more voiced conversation scenes and more mini-games and collectibles for you to find.
Puzzles once again are a mixed bag of what you’ve seen before but are still fun to solve. They range from mazes to logic to maths puzzles, and back again are also sliding puzzles and probably the weakest ones being where you must study fine detail in pictures. The DS’s small screen doesn’t really lend itself to such puzzles and you may use up hint coins and sacrifice Picarats simple because you can’t see that well. Some puzzles are also written a little obscurely and are difficult to solve because you’re not sure exactly what you need to do. It’s also slightly annoying that all three characters have to comment on things you tap on before the speech bubbles disappear whilst you’re tapping about the screen to find hint coins, puzzles and secrets around the town and buildings.
With over 150 puzzles and some fun mini-games to play with, this one should keep you busy for many hours and it’s also fun to play along with someone else at the same time. I’m a big fan of the series but can’t help thinking they need to mix things up a little bit for the next one. It gets a brain expanding 8 out of 10.
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