Gaming to Go: Professor Layton and the Curious Village (p2)

As previously mentioned, Layton goes out of its way to make this whole puzzle-solving thing an even more pleasant experience. Some of the gameplay mechanics even make the title decently well-suited for gaming on the go, which is admittedly not what I expected at all the first time I fired it up.

The big thing is being able to skip puzzles. Layton has a ton of them available for your perusal, but it only forces you to complete a handful in order to advance the plot, letting you take the wussy easy way out and return to the more difficult challenges at a later time. It's a fantastic addition, in my opinion, considering the sheer variety of brain teasers you'll encounter over the course of the game. It's a given that some of the puzzles will be more difficult than others, particularly with each player's individual strengths, but Layton provides a fair playing field for all by letting you skip some of the more infuriating puzzles and continue to push the plot forward.

I've had to skip a few puzzles myself so far. Embarrassing? A little, sure, but my incredible shame is a small price to pay for my sanity. Layton's brain teasers are challenging, if nothing else, though there's a nice mix available to keep the game from quickly becoming a chore of one soul-shattering teaser after another. And even the most difficult puzzles can be solved through use of the hint system, which provides up to three clues in exchange for hint coins cleverly hidden all across the curious village of the title.

Hint coins are available in a finite quantity, but you should still be able to find enough to get you through the game. In case your pride simply has no use for coins, hints, or sanity, you can just tackle each puzzle as it comes and work tirelessly until it's complete. That's an effective strategy in its own right, but not one without consequences. Solving each puzzle will earn you a certain amount of picarats, the game's measure of keeping score. Every time you screw up on a teaser, however, the maximum amount of picarat you can earn for that puzzle permanently decreases, which encourages you to take your time and work out each puzzle instead of guessing like mad...until you realize picarats are nearly useless.

You'll need a certain amount of them by the end of the game in order to unlock the secret content, though just working through all 135 puzzles should be enough to do that regardless of how much picarat you pull in from each teaser. Knowing this, Layton becomes an even better portable game, as it lets you take the teasers with you whenever you're out and about and provides an entire catalogue of puzzles for you to solve at your leisure.

That's what I've been doing, at least. A number of the puzzles have so far withstood even the awe-inspiring power of my mind, so I've taken note of which ones and brought them with me on my daily commute, spending whatever free time I have staring in blissful agony at the screen. Sometimes a change of environment is an excellent opportunity to change the way you're thinking about a puzzle, so why not spend a few minutes on it whenever you're out and about during your day?

And once you've worked your way through all of the puzzles and completed the game, the fun isn't quite over. A new puzzle is available for download every week, and has been since the game's debut in February, though fellow puzzle fiends have noticed that the new puzzles aren't so much downloadable content as they are unlock codes for puzzles hidden on the cart. Still, downloadable or not, the puzzles are a great way to extend the life of the game, and each can still be taken on the road and agonized over in your free time until you finally come up with the solution.