Professor Layton and the Unwound Future Review

The Professor Layton series is one of the oddest series in gaming in quite a long time. For games that fuse point-and-click adventure games, puzzle-solving and what can only be described as a type of modern-day steampunk with a dash of science fiction, they

Back To The Future

 

The Unwound Future opens in medias res as we find the good professor and his young apprentice Luke trying to wrap their heads around the events of the past week. The duo attend a demonstration of a time machine that goes horribly awry in an explosion, seemingly killing the prime minister and the scientist administering the test. Shortly thereafter, the pair receive a letter asking their help. The twist? Luke sent it himself from ten years in the future. What happened to the time machine? Why does Luke need their help ten years down the line?

 

The great thing with the stories in Professor Layton games is that they go places you don

The music

A Puzzling Future

 

The main draw of the Layton series has always been the head-scratching puzzles found throughout. Everyone has a puzzle they need solved, and some of them can be incredibly difficult.

 

In past Layton games, you received three hints that would point you in the direction you needed to go but wouldn

However, here was my problem. After three Layton games, I

Even with those issues, I still found myself enjoying the puzzles in this Professor Layton game far more than the first installment and almost as much as the second. As always, there are several moments where you feel like the smartest person in the world, and several moments where you slap your forehead wondering how you could have missed that vital clue. The puzzles are mostly fair to you and only ask that you pay attention when you’re playing.

 

Extra Puzzling

 

Like any Professor Layton game, Unwound Future includes several minigames that may amuse you by varying degrees. You’ll receive stickers throughout the game that can be placed in a picturebook. Once placed in the proper places in the picturebook, you can read the whole story. If you finish all three of them, you get a cool bonus.

 

Next up, Luke receives a toy car and several game boards. His job is to get the toy car to hit several points on the board and make it to the end with a limited number of turn indicators. There are about ten of these scattered throughout the game, and those are fun as well, if somewhat difficult.