Professor Layton and Pandora's Box

Today’s a great day for Nintendo DS owners – a new Professor Layton game is out! Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box gives us another dose of the charming gameplay found in the first game, Professor Layton and The Curious Village.

The games basically involve you solving lots of puzzles whilst investigating a mystery. The actual story itself is pretty much irrelevant, and only serves to move you from puzzle to puzzle, but it’s a nice change to all the frantic action games that seem to make up most of the charts these days! In addition to the puzzles, there are also places to explore and items to collect along the way. The game is presented in a hand-drawn cartoon style, with voice actors playing the various characters, and the occasional animation clip for key scenes.

The puzzles range from the amazingly easy to the mildly difficult, and if you do get stuck there are hints to nudge you in the right direction. As with many Nintendo games, it’s clearly aimed at entertaining all ages. Younger players will still be able to solve many of the puzzles on their own, with or without hints, and older players will get just as much satisfaction from getting them right first time, or without any assistance at all. We had great fun playing three or four puzzles a night for a few weeks, although some of the trickier puzzles can end up in tussles over control of the stylus for “just one more go, I think I’ve got it this time – oh, no, I haven’t, just one more go”…

Amazon currently have the best prices – the first game (Professor Layton and The Curious Village) is around £18, and the new one (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box) is around £28 – everyone else seems to be doing it for £30+ as of 25 Sept 09 – even Play, which was a surprise.

I thoroughly recommend both these games! Buy them! NOW!