Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call is the long-awaited fourth instalment of the popular point-and-click puzzle game on the Nintendo DS.
It has been two years since its launch in Japan and is, in essence, a prequel to the Layton series. It tells the story of a much younger Professor and how he first got acquainted with his side-kick, Luke.
In this adventure Professor Hershel Layton, his assistant Emmy Altava and the young Luke Triton investigate a mystery in a village called Misthallery. This small community is under attack by a fierce spectre, and the Professor has been called to help.
It’s up to the Layton-gang to solve this mystery as well as dozens of other puzzles the villagers need help with.
How to present yourself
Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call contain a surprising amount of pre-rendered videos and voiced dialogue – a real treat for any Nintendo DS game. While most of the story is told through text dialogue, the occasional cut-scene or voice-over adds a great deal of suspense to the outstanding plot.
The story, although some-what winding and lengthy, is packed full of thrills and twists. All of the characters in Spectre’s Call are colourful, flamboyant and very memorable.
The game takes time-off from the main plot to develop and establish unique personalities and backgrounds for each villager in Misthallery. For instance, you’ll come across a crazy old lady who refuses to sell her candy to adults. She plays an insignificant part in the story but you’ll find out plenty about her life and how she got so detatched from society.
Just as with the minor characters, a great deal is spent on developing the protagonists and revealing exactly how Luke and the Professor started their puzzle-solving career together. In fact, it can go into such detail at times that it feels like you’re reading a novel instead of playing a game.
Puzzling stuff
Some gamers may easily lose interest in the game especially if it’s their first encounter with a Layton-title.
Like previous games, Spectre’s Call is controlled using only the stylus. Exploring the village is done by clicking directional arrows along the edge of the screen and frantically tapping at any object that moves or seems out of place. In doing so you’ll encounter tons of collectible items, hint coins and hidden puzzles.
For most Layton fans the puzzles are the main attraction. Spectre’s Call features over 170 unique and challenging puzzles and solving all of them will keep you busy for a fairly long time. The puzzles range from simple jigsaw-like puzzles to serious mathematical challenges that will leave you grabbing for a calculator.
While none of the puzzles require college-level calculus, the expertly set-out questions will often leave you dumbfounded.
When you solve a puzzle you’ll be awarded ‘Picarats’, points from the in-game score system. The harder the question the more points you’ll be awarded for providing the correct answer.
Suggest an incorrect solution and the maximum amount of points you can obtain for the puzzle will be reduced. While you can’t really do anything with the Picarats you collect it is a handy way of judging the difficulty of a puzzle you’re trying to solve.
To aid struggling players the same tried-and-trusted hint system reappears again. If you get stuck on a particular puzzle you can exchange a hint coin for a clue.
Every puzzle has four hints and they are unlocked sequentially. The first hint is always useless; usually telling you to ‘think of the puzzle in a different way’. The last hint basically gives you step by step instructions on deriving the answer you seek.
If you’ve played any previous Professor Layton game you’ll know exactly what to expect.
Layton, revisited
There’s very little originality in terms of gameplay and even some of the puzzles have similar concepts to those featured in previous games. I suppose it’s one of the unavoidable disadvantages when creating a puzzle game with such a large scope.
If, after hours of an engaging story and tons of puzzles, you still feel like some more Layton goodness you can head over to the minigame section. These minigames unlock as you find hidden items in the main campaign and are generally fun and entertaining.
My favourite is the train-set game in which you have to lay out the track and guide your model train to the goal without hitting any obstacles. It provides a few minutes of fun but I doubt you’ll replay the levels you’ve already completed. But somehow even after giving us mini-games and additional freely downloadable puzzles, I still feel ripped off.
You see – the US version of the game (Professor Layton and the Last Spectre) contains even more additional content that was simply removed from the European version.
Actually it’s not even bonus content I’m talking about but rather a full scale RPG that supposedly takes a further 100 hours to complete.
This is unnerving – why remove such a large chunk of content from the EU version of the game? I hope they’re not planning on selling it back to us as a spin-off title…
In closing…
However – even with the removed features Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call is packed with content that’s bound to keep puzzle loving fans occupied for hours.
The unique and mysterious village of Misthallery has plenty of secrets and puzzles and the eccentric characters will leave a lasting impression.
