Professor Layton and the Curious Village -- Initial Impression.

I'm jumping over to the Nintendo DS for my next game. It's going to be Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It's the first in a series of three puzzle games based on the Japanese children's books called Mental Gymnastics from Akira Tago. The games are Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Professor Layton and Pandora's Box, and Professor Layton and the Last Time Travel. The games are collections of puzzles loosely tied to a story. The puzzles are from a wide selection of classic brainteasers. I'm not entirely sure how much game there is going to be. Hopefully the story and characters add some charm and the brainteasers are more enjoyable than the scam of learning by the pure repetition of tasks that is Nintendo's Brain Training series. In that one, you're just improving your "brain age" by getting better at the tasks themselves. You're learning the tasks. Professor Layton should actually require you to actively think about the solutions. I've played through the introductory chapter which amounts to seven puzzles out of the supposedly one-hundred and fifty reported to be in the game. My initial impression is surprisingly strong at the moment. The game is clearly going to hinge on the strength of the puzzles themselves. Hopefully the game manages to stay in the sweet spot of challenging without straying too far into simplicity or frustration.