So while I’m already bitching about video games
You played this Puzzle Agent game? It’s on Steam. Doesn’t cost very much. It’s like: not bad.
Basically, it’s Professor Layton, only it looks like it was drawn in crayon rather than anime’d by somebody in the nineteenth century. You play this dude who works for the FBI’s puzzle division, and you have to investigate a mystery in the back end of absolutely nowhere. And, in true Professor Layton fashion, everybody has puzzles for you to solve!
Much like Professor Layton, there’s a sly absurdist bent at work here, as people cheerfully talk about devising puzzles and solving puzzles and how they won’t help you unless you can solve this puzzle. Unlike Layton, the characters in Puzzle Agent appear to be somewhat aware of the absurdity of this situation. Maybe that’s a good thing, and maybe it isn’t, but it does lead to the occasional amusing dialogue, such as: you meet with the sheriff to review the evidence from the crime scene, which consists of security camera images. He’s brought them along with you, and he tells you that he took the liberty of mixing them all up so now you can put them back in the right order. That’s not bad. The game also could teach Professor Layton a thing or two about suspense and drama; there’s at least one moment where the game’s legitimately creepier than any blood-smeared, door-bangin’, dark-and-stormy-night survival horror adventure game I’ve played lately.
If you’ve played Professor Layton, then you know everything you need to know about how Puzzle Agent plays. You talk to people, solve puzzles, and the mystery mainly solves itself around you. The only difference is that, for my money, Layton’s puzzles are more tightly constructed; there have been a few occasions so far in Puzzle Agent where I’ve been pretty unclear as to what exactly I’m meant to do in a given puzzle. When you solve a puzzle, it gets shipped back to FBI headquarters for approval, and you get a tally of how many taxpayer dollars were spent on the solution; it’s something like $78k per attempt, which is pretty funny all by itself. Unlike in real life, though, you get a better agent rank for spending less taxpayer money, which I’m assuming is one of those moments where realism had to be sacrificed for the sake of gameplay.
So is Puzzle Agent worth your ten bucks? Right now, I have to say no, just because the holiday sale is going to start any day now, and it’ll go down to like two bucks. Which is still like twice as much as I paid for it during the last huge Steam sale. I’m serious: don’t pay full price for shit on Steam. The end.
