I love it when a meme comes together.

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Re: my last post — duh! of course I was going to buy Layton, the sequel to the bestest DS game ever.

Thanks to GameSetWatch for alerting me that Layton is Twittering. Find him at @TopHatProfessor.

In honor of purchasing the game last night, I have set my desktop wallpaper to one of the promotional images kindly provided by IGN. Grab one here if you’re similarly inclined.

The real dilemma now, of course, is when to buy Fat Princess for PS3 — before or after the Layton cartridge arrives?

Have: copies of Henry Hatsworth (stalled by unlocking the hardest bonus level in the game and having to replay other levels to open normal path) and Elite Beat Agents, both at approx. 50% completion

Want: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Dare I indulge in Layton and return later to my current plays? Or should I be true to the two cartridges I’ve got in rotation now?

I just finished playing Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village (DS), and despite having taken fewer than 10 hours in total to complete, it’s firmly among the top of the list of my favorite games of all time.

Everything about it is frankly just great. The story, setting and tone are engaging – you play as the Professor and his assistant Luke, invited to a village to investigate the mystery surrounding a very strange inheritance. The game is set in a non-specific time period, and Layton might as well be Sherlock Holmes (he even has a funny tall hat) except that there are cars around.

The music sets a great mood, too – one of my favorite tunes can be heard here (YouTube link).

I even like the way the puzzles are integrated. The characters just dig puzzles and want you to help them solve a few stumpers, for the most part…but perhaps there’s more to this odd habit than meets the eye. At any rate, it’s a change from other puzzle games I love (like the Monkey Island series), where you find yourself “putting different fluids in balloons so you can put them in a mail tube so you can flood a communications room so you can etcetera.” [1]

The puzzles were frequently challenging, often trick questions, and two or three times involved geometry, the answers for which I caved and googled. (Length of a side of a triangle, my foot!) Plus the illustrations are hella cute! [2]

Anyway, I finished the game so quickly because I couldn’t get enough of it, and by the end I was wishing there was more. Luckily while searching YouTube for videos of the cutscenes I found that Layton is part one of a THREE part series (not two as I’d heard before).

I do wish they would make a full length anime film or series out of these characters, though. It could be the new and improved Detective Conan/Case Closed.

- Superstruct is entering its third week and there’s a lot to see and do, and some truly brilliant ideas – but so far players seem to be struggling to put ideas into motion. This week I’m focusing on creating missions and having people enact them in real life (for example, creating and displaying posters).

- I’m participating in both 24 Hour Comics Day (technically this took place last Saturday but I was out of town) and NaNoWriMo, both of which rely on generating a certain amount of content in a set time frame…not unlike a game mechanic, really. Is content over quality the writing equivalent of WoW level grinding?

- Just got Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I have been waiting it to arrive for WEEKS, painstakingly tracking the shipment, and am now more than ready to bust out the DS every night. I’ve been missing it ever since I finished Phantom Hourglass.