Level256

Blue Dragon is a strange series. Decent game ideas but nothing new or innovative. Enjoyable game play with unbelievably irritating characters. The shadow ranks are interesting but only need to be levelled to around 36 in the 360 version ? making any further advancement pointless beyond the achievements gained. Why do that? Why not reward people for slaving away at your game for hours? Where?s my ultimate shadow skill for hitting rank 99? I?ll do it for the right reward?I bred Chocobos for DAYS to get Knights of the Round. Reward me for my dedication damn you! These and other frustrations led to me getting very close to the end of Blue Dragon, but never finishing it.

Blue Dragon Plus takes place one year after the end of the 360 game and MAN do I wish I had struggled through those last 2 hours because I have no idea what?s going on. But that?s okay, bite size plot exposition fills me in on all the spoilers negating any need to go back to it. Ever. Worryingly, if I was new to the series I don?t think it would be easy for me to buy in to the concept of people having shadows that look like bats or dragons or Minotaur which come out when they are in trouble. Blue Dragon plus relies heavily on you having played its predecessor and I don?t believe it stands up very well as an introduction to the franchise.

Petty annoyances aside, let?s get to grips with the game itself. Game play is Real Time Strategy reminiscent of the infinitely superior Final Fantasy Revenant Wings. There is no training given whatsoever and you are thrown straight into the ?action? with only brief descriptions of each character?s strengths and weaknesses to guide you in their development. It?s simple enough to get to grips with the controls though and battles essentially consist of selecting all your characters and pointing them at the nearest bad guy, although if you just wait most enemies will wander over to you and you will auto attack them into oblivion. All too soon your group of characters is split up to explore different areas in several teams. I felt I hadn?t been given enough time to get to know the players in this adventure, let alone work out what would be the best way to group them. Apparently it?s irrelevant anyway as I can just summon everyone back to a single party whenever I feel like it.

The game irritatingly pauses whenever you summon a shadow for a special attack and occasionally the action will stop for a bit of plot. Bizarrely this often leads to your whole team being miraculously cured of status effects, low health and even death?kamikaze attacks it is then. Cut scenes are beautiful and impressive and thankfully there are no voices, rendering Marumaro actually bearable. I couldn?t find a way to skip plot so I often ended up just sat, stylus on the screen to fast forward text and waiting to actually DO something. This doesn?t gel well with the otherwise well designed bite size chunks of game play which would make this game perfect for a handheld.

I love RTS games but Blue Dragon Plus is vaguely enjoyable at best. A decent distraction on a long train journey but definitely geared towards the Blue Dragon devotee. It just suffers from too many irritating problems in both its plot and battle system to be a truly great game.

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?