Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the first of a series of DS titles to star the cunning Professor and his puzzling apprentice Luke, a pair of sleuths out to solve mysteries?
In this adventure the pair is invited to the village of St. Mystere to help solve the mystery of The Golden Apple, left in the will of the town?s Baron Reinhold. Even finding the path to the village is a puzzle and there?s many more ahead. Once you find and gain entry to St. Mystere you meet some of the town?s quirky inhabitants. It seems everyone in the village is obsessed with puzzles and they?ll often ask you for help when they get stuck. Solving these will gain you clues, items or story progression.
There are 120 puzzles to find in the main game and many more to unlock in the bonuses section, as well as a weekly download from the Nintendo WiFi service.Each chapter opens and closes with an animated clip, these look so professional that I wondered why I had never seen this show before (I?m a big kid). The game has a charming graphical style, which reminds me of French cartoons I watched as a child and the music ties in with this beautifully, creating a suitably relaxed mood so you can settle down for some serious problem solving.
There is always something to do in this game ? I love that about it. At no point did I feel like I was stuck. If I couldn?t work out a riddle or puzzle I could simply move on to the next one and return to it later, or I could use one of the many hint coins I?d collected to give me a clue as to where I was going wrong. I was never bored and only occasionally frustrated with the puzzles I had to solve. As there are many different types of puzzles to play, everyone will find something they?re good at!
Apart from flexing your brain, the main things that?ll keep you playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village are the story and the characters. Everyone is interesting and slightly strange and the plot twists and turns with unsolved mysteries piling up quickly and actually being intriguing enough to have you out hunting for clues because you WANT TO KNOW, not just because it?s a quick way to another puzzle. Professor Layton offers DS owners a break from their daily Brain Training/Maths Training/Whatever with some seriously interesting problems and riddles. There?s a lot more satisfaction in solving problems to progress in the story than in hearing the DA-DING of Brain Training for adding 3+5.
Now?. A glass jar holds a single germ. After one minute, the germ splits into two germs. One minute after that, the two germs each split again, forming a total of four germs. Continuing at this rate, a single germ can multiply to fill the whole jar in exactly one hour. Knowing this, how long in minutes would it take to fill the jar if you had started with two germs?