Predictions,
predictions. Here are some of the bold predictions I’ve made
over the past few years:

• Edible cell phones
• Brad Pitt runs for Congress
• Iraq becomes 51st state
• Jonathan Coulton wins
  an Oscar for Best Song
• Blizzard announces its
  new massively multiplayer online roleplaying game: Lego Twilight

Impressive, no? Okay, no.
BUT. The thing about predictions is that if you make enough
of them, just like a broken clock, you end up being right every so
often.

And one prediction I have
been most definitely right about is this one:

• The Nintendo DS will
  become a great home for new adventure games.

It’s hard to deny
how magnificently right I’ve been on this one, with the release
of such games as Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine
Doors, Time
Hollow, and the Hotel
Dusk series and Ace Attorney franchise,
just to name a few.

But
arguably standing top hat and shoulders above them all is the Professor
Layton series. Starting in 2008 with Professor
Layton and the Curious Village, this sparkling collection
of adventures has successfully mixed great storytelling with a dizzying
array of fun-to-solve puzzles.

Professor Layton
and the Unwound Future is a beautiful example of the very
best practices perpertrated by the best game studios: Taking a good
game concept and refining it further and further with each installment.
Level 5 displays this admirable behavior with this, the third game
in the series. Everyone loved the first game but criticized its reliance
on repeating puzzle types too often, as well as including those much-hated
matchstick puzzles. The second game, Professor Layton and the
Diabolical Box successfully addressed both of these problems.

Professor Layton
and the Unwound Future‘s improvements are in the storytelling.
While the stories of all three games have been excellent, by the end
of Unwound Future I was picturing the terrific anime
film that could be made from the storyline in the game. That’s
how good it is.

For
those of you who may be new to the series, I’ll give you the
broad strokes of the mythos: Professor Layton is a tophat-wearing
British researcher who spends most of his time as a sort of puzzle-solving
detective. His constant companion is his apprentice, an eager young
boy named Luke. And I do mean constant companion, friends.
This kid seems to have practically no other life. He never seems to
need to be in school, or do homework, or other activities appropriate
to other 12-year-olds. What the hell, the game is Japanese, just go
with it.

Anyway, in Professor Layton’s
world, all conflicts, all locks and most conversations are resolved
by solving puzzles. You get used to this convention pretty quickly,
sort of like you get used to the ubiquity of available sex in the
world of a porno movie (or so I’ve heard).

This time around the story
is more personal than in the first two games. The story begins with
the very public demonstration of nothing less than a time machine.
When the test goes horribly wrong, the games’s afoot, and our
dynamic duo get plunged into an altered version of London and a lot
of mysteries regarding identity, guilt, and retribution. And a whole
lot of yummy puzzles.

Oh, the puzzles! This is,
quite simply, a magnificent collection of head-scratchers. The variety,
range, and quality are absolutely first rate. No matter what kind
of puzzle you enjoy, chances are you’ll find it here. There
are sliders, Chinese wood block puzzles, logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles,
math puzzles, visual puzzles, and many many more.

The
game makes admirable use of the Nintendo’s touch screen for
the puzzle solving. You use the stylus to press buttons, write answers,
push blocks around, you name it. There’s also a terrifically
helpful feature called “Memo” that essentially lets you
put a piece of tracing paper over the puzzle so that you can scribble
on it to your heart’s content. Many of the puzzlers would be
quite difficult to solve without this mechanic.

The game also has a built-in
hint system which has been improved from the first two games. In order
to access hints, you have to spend “Hint Coins” that you
collect while investigating the game’s many attractive environments.
There are four hints per puzzle, with the final clue costing double.

Each time you solve a puzzle,
you earn a currency called “picarats” which give you access
to bonus content upon finishing the game.

The puzzles range in difficulty
from pretty darned easy to downright fiendish, with everything in
between.

And the fun doesn’t
stop there. The game is comes loaded with extras. There are four optional
minigames that you pick up and add to during the course of your adventure.
The easiest is a picture book in which you complete stories using
stickers that you find around the game world. Next is a series of
challenges involving a toy car. Each puzzle is a course you have to
plot, navigating obstacles using a limited number of tools. The most
difficult of the optional minigames involves a parrot that you find
(and get to name!). They are all fun and, if you really dig into them,
add lots of hours to the game – in a good way, of course.

There
are also free downloadable puzzles for those of you who like to go
wi-fi with your DS.

Graphically, the game is
on par with the first two. All three of the games have a very cohesive
look, and the cinematics this time around are generous and uniformly
excellent. There’s even a good bit of well-done voice acting.

The excellence of this
game should be no surprise, considering it’s made by the same
folks who brought us, in addition to the first two games in the series,
Rogue Galaxy, Dragon Quest VII and the
Dark Cloud series. These people know what they are
doing.

I again emphasize the game’s
excellent storytelling, which is full of gratifying surprises and
intrigue. From the exciting opening sequence to the poignant conclusion,
I was riveted by Professor Layton and the Unwound Future.
I think you will be, too.

One last note: Make sure
to hang in through all of the credits at the end or you might miss
something!

System Requirements:

A working Nintendo DS

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.