Game Review

I’ve chosen one game out of the series as for its characters, gameplay, and soundtrack. But it doesn’t mean that I prefer this game over the others in the series.

Professor Layton and the Lost Future is a puzzle adventure game created by Akihiro Hino and was developed and published by Level- 5 on the Nintendo DS in early 2010. This game was the third game of the series. Tomohito Nishiura is the soundtrack composer for all the games which made a great impact on the games tensions, creating both happy and cheerful scene and intense and or saddening scenes. Akira Tago was the creator of the puzzles within the game and created a best-selling quiz book called “Head Gymnastic” which even inspired the Professor Layton series.

The objective of the game is to complete objectives by solving puzzles in order to progress in the story. Lost future contains 201 puzzles with only 153 being included in the story, the rest being downloadable content. When completing a puzzle the character Professor Layton will be awarded points. This is similar to getting a puzzle wrong the puzzle’s Picarats decrease. These puzzles vary in difficulty in which the more Picarats, the higher the difficulty. However, most puzzles can be skipped unless they play an important role in the progression of the game.

If the player gets stuck on a puzzle they can use 3 hints and a super hint which are only accessible through collecting hint coins which are hidden like Easter eggs, everywhere in the game. There are also 3 minigames within the game which upon completion allow the player to answer bonus puzzles which unlock things such as the music, voice lines, concept art, and cutscenes.

With all this content there are about 60 hours or less to be put in the game. Although The game isn’t one to be replayed multiple times as it’s a linear game, though it hasn’t stopped fans from playing the same game over and over again for the story.

Professor Layton and the Lost Future is an amusing game if you like testing yourself with the puzzles. The game works at your pace so you can take as long as you need to complete it. Even if you’re not interested in the puzzles, there is still the well-written story and its characters to enjoy in the game.

I’ll try to keep the explanation of the story short, sweet and spoiler-free as possible as the game contains a lot of detail. Professor Layton and his assistant Luke Triton receive a letter from a supposed Future Luke writing 10 years in the future about going to a clock shop in London to discuss more of a mysterious future evil Layton. Layton believes that the letter might be connected to the events of the week before. That being a time machine demonstration, attended by scientists and the fictional prime minister, going wrong which the prime minister and many scientists go missing. So Professor Layton and his apprentice decide to take on this mysterious letter.

The art style is very interesting as it focuses on portraying the connection of characters’ appearances with their personalities. Some characters are shown to be more appealing to the eye than others as to show the variety and making nearly all characters stand out. They may have similar features such as Layton and the character Barton have the same eyes and nose while everything else is different about them. I’d say it is a style worth practicing if you’re interested in making your characters look unique. None of the colour palettes include a flat white or black and instead follows a warm colour palette with most characters.

Important to mention is the 37 cutscenes in the game. with the simple style in use, they make some pretty smooth running animation, many being humorous and lasting for a minute or so. The animations are used mostly to show important moments in the game such as the introduction of a character or progression in the plot.

Professor Layton, the title protagonist, is an archeology professor from London. Dressing and behaving like an English gentleman. The qualities this character portrays are being brave, intelligent and well-mannered. He potentially is seen as a great role model to a young audience as he tends to tell his apprentice and or the player how a true gentleman should act with phrases such as “… show gratitude to one’s teachers”. Layton throughout the game is shown to be very caring as he put his friend before himself.

Luke Triton, Deuteragonist, is Professor Layton’s self-proclaimed apprentice who helps Layton throughout the game. He is portrayed to be a polite young boy and is used to represent the player in a sense, questioning the Professor throughout the game and usually catching on to Layton’s explanations of the mystery. This is most likely used in order for the player to understand the game’s plot thus far. Luke is also used as a form of comic relief, cracking a joke every so often to lighten the mood within the game.

This game has been given ratings of 7-9/10 and even 5/5 stars according to The Guardian. With such high ratings from this game alone, there’s no doubt it has little competition. Although there isn’t any game exactly like Professor Layton, it definitely competes with games such as Ace Attorney where they even collaborated to make a game literally named about the said competition: Professor Layton VS Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney.

To end this off, I highly recommend to anyone looking for a new game or genre to play, to try out Professor Layton and the Lost future. I personally enjoy this game for its art style and story as I find those as key parts of making an enjoyable game. I could go on more about this game but I’d rather not spoil it. This game has a brilliant story, unique characters and many, many puzzles for the player to solve.