Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call

It was not possible to play too much of Layton’s latest at GAMEfest due to a time limit and the demo Nintendo DSi XL being physically chained to a Nintendo representative, presumably so that it did not have to be set up within the special 3DS area or interrupt the Zelda theme of Nintendo’s other booth. Nonetheless, it was possible to complete a couple of the first puzzles by quickly skipping through much of the story - of which there was a lot.

That story examines a younger Hershel Layton before he met Luke, skipping back to three years before the original Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the first game in a new trilogy (the second game in the second trilogy is the first Nintendo 3DS Layton outing, Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle). The overworked Layton is assigned an assistant in the chatty Emmy by Dean Delmona. Not particularly impressed, Layton nonetheless gets stuck into an investigation with Emmy’s help. Answering a call for help from his friend Clark Triton, the Professor goes to look into reports of a destructive spectre, a mysterious flute and a boy - Luke - who can predict the appearances of the threat.

 

Decoding a hidden message from a letter by reading it in a slightly different way and spotting the odd picture out from a selection of four, the puzzles we were able to get through were simple, start of game fare, as was expected. Expect the challenge to ramp up pretty quickly once the game truly gets started. Moving around the areas and discovering problems is the same as ever; tap the shoe icon and the direction that you want to go, then start talking to people and wait for them to start tipping their hearts and brains - mainly their confused brains - into your lap before they give you any useful information.

Three mini-games are also included, though we did not get the chance to try them. In one, model train tracks must be built so that a train can travel between stations efficiently; in another, fish are guided to collect up precious gold coins. Finally, appropriate verbs have to be selected in the third game so that a stage performance goes off without a hitch.