Professor Layton

Eu tentei recentemente explicar a um amigo sobre a raposa, a galinha e o sem-fim.

“É um enigma clássico.  Você começou uma raposa, uma galinha, e um sem-fim em um lado de um rio.  Você pode somente carregar dois deles em um barco. Se você deixar a raposa sozinha com a galinha, comê-la-á, e se você deixar a galinha sozinha com o sem-fim, comê-lo-á.  Como pode você começar todos os três deles através do rio com segurança?”

Meu amigo, nunca jogando Zork zero, olhado me como se eu era louco.  Mas agora eu tenho minha vingança, porque eu introduzi-o a Professor Layton e a vila curiosa, que tem um variant deste enigma, e é completamente addicted.

Os jogos do enigma foram um outré do bocado no passado poucos anos desde que a comunidade do PC recuperou dos excessos dos anos adiantados do CD-ROM.  Talvez era um sentido lingering de jogar gastado horas desperdiçado excesso da culpa O 7o convidado.  O enigma típico em jogos de hoje tende a ser um sideshow ao evento principal e à perfuração a carregar.

Professor Layton e a vila curiosa is all about good puzzles, what are sometimes called “brainteasers”.  Some of them are straightforward, some of them are trick puzzles.  Some are easy, some are hard.  But nearly all of them are interesting, and they don’t talk down to the player.

The eponymous Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, visit the village of St. Mystere to assist in a mysterious bequest.  The villagers of St. Mystere spend their days, and nights, trying to solve puzzles.  As Layton unravels the thread of the game’s plot he will also be presented with well over 100 puzzles, of varied difficulties, by the villagers.

The artwork is beautiful: simple lines, and somehow evocative of the animated film The Triplets of Belleville.  The music, likewise, evokes the French countryside, and if it can get a bit repetitive at times, it still enhances the experience.  That being said, I’m a sucker for accordion music.   Your mileage may vary. The inhabitants of the village are by turns awkward, fat, ugly, grotesque-looking, and supercilious, so it looks to me as though the authors actually did carefully survey the inhabitants of small French villages before creating the game.  

Throughout the game you’ll find “hint coins” which can be used to purchase hints on any puzzles.  You’ll also receive different puzzles from the same villagers.  At the end of a given “chapter” of the game, any unsolved puzzles will appear in “Granny Riddleton’s Puzzle Shack”, so there is no way to  permanently miss a puzzle.  It did seem to me that solving a puzzle in Granny’s shack was less satisfying than solving it “on the street,” but that’s entirely a question of mood.

There are also various meta-puzzles along the way that unlock bonus content, and there is extra downloadable content that can be played without impacting the main storyline of the game.

A sequel has already been released in Japan, and work is proceeding on the third game, which I will buy without a second thought.  It’s that good.