Professor Layton & the Spectre's Call review

Professor Layton & The Spectre's Call still has the Layton charm, but with some dreadful puzzle design and a meandering plot, it's starting to wear a little thin.

Format: Nintendo DS
Developer: Level 5
Publisher: Nintendo
Age rating: PEGI 7+
Released: Out now

This reminds me of a puzzle. A man has four Nintendo DS games, all in the same series. The first game is emblazoned with four stars. The second, three and a half. The third, four and a half. Based on a barely visible image, an obtusely-worded question and a series of basic but time consuming equations, calculate the number which should appear on the fourth game's cover.

It's easier when the answer's at the top of the page. No riddles are required to explain why Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call is a bit disappointing, although there are plenty of puzzles which can be used as examples as to why. The second puzzle in the game, for example, requires you to pick out an almost indecipherable detail in four tiny, postage stamp-sized images. There are plenty of variables that could affect the answer. The wording of the question doesn't account for these variables. To solve it, you're required to take a leap of logic and make assumptions. This isn't how logic puzzles work.

Let's look, also, at another early puzzle. You're tasked with working out how many mops would be required to clean up for 30 days, with specific clauses applied to the mops. One of these clauses is that the mops take two days to dry. Honestly... who rigidly waits for a mop to dry before reusing it? What's wrong with rinsing it off? In this case, if you use the logic that 'mops don't need to be dried' you can still reach the correct answer, but the game's explanation is far more complex and far less intelligent. In this case, though, it's not harmful to the puzzle solution. Sadly this doesn't apply for many of the others.

The main problem with Spectre's Call is that it's very, very apparent Level-5 has run out of puzzle ideas. You have this selection of logic puzzles, often poorly worded and requiring specific assumptions to solve (or otherwise using brute force until you guess the correct answer). The problem here isn't finding the solutions; they're often obvious--too obvious, in fact. Try and apply any clever logical thinking to the situation and, congratulations, you've outdone the game. All too often, your own logic exceeds that of the game's, and this in itself is a glaring flaw in a game designed to make you think and solve.