While there'll be no Professor Layton game launching in the UK within the 3DS' launch period (from 25th May to June), the handheld won't be completely void of puzzle games when it launches. In fact, there are actually two challengers that are stepping up to fill the void left by puzzling professor, with the first, Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights even going so far as to steal the Professor's iconic hat. The second puzzle game, however, is one that few people have been paying attention to - up until now. At the recent Discover 3DS event in Amsterdam, none of the other journalists seemed all that interested, as they rushed past the James Noir booth in search of something they presumably found more exciting. But with a familiar mix of puzzles and story, and no Professor Layton game to oppose it, James Noir: Hollywood Crimes could catch a few people unaware.
Puzzles alternate between top and bottom screen, depending on what they involve.
The game is set in 1961, on the set of a rather unusual TV game show, where you, and the other participants are competing to solve a series of murders that have been committed by some criminal mastermind - at least, that's what we think is going on, based on what we managed to pick up from the slightly weird intro. In order to catch the person behind all the murders, you'll need to solve various Layton-esque brain teasers, as you try to unravel the mystery. During our time with the game we got to try our hands, eyes and brains on two puzzles, with an overly helpful Dutch girl watching our every move...
The first puzzle we were presented with showed you an arrangement of flowers, and asked you to find a number, hidden somewhere within the arrangement. After staring at the flowers for a while, we quickly realised you could rotate the camera, and, when you looked at it from a specific angle, the flowers came together to form a number. Clever indeed - and we felt clever for solving it, too. The 3D effect of the 3DS screen was used to good effect here, as well, as it meant that once you'd correctly orientated the flowers, the number 8 was as clear as day.
The second puzzle, however, was a little bit trickier. We were presented with a cube with two clock faces on, with letters around the outside in place of the numbers, and three clock hands in two different, fixed orientations. The aim of the puzzle was to work out how you could make it so that the hands on each clock were pointing to the same selection of three letters. Why they needed to be stuck on a cube we don't really know (well, we do - presumably so Ubisoft could go "look at our amazing 3D effects! LOOK!"), but for us, it seemed to just make the puzzle more awkward than it needed to be, as you needed to be able to compare the two clock faces to work out the answer, which meant you were constantly rotating the damn thing until it clicked. And after a couple of hints of the friendly Dutch part 3DS/part woman creature, I managed to work it out.
Far easier to solve than it is to explain... And that's saying something...
And so ended our enjoyable, if somewhat brief introduction to James Noir: Hollywood Crimes - which, from what we've played is shaping up to be a pretty interesting puzzle game. How well the game's going to make use of the 3D still remains to be seen (the thought of some of the puzzles a Layton game could throw at you using the 3D make our head explode), but with a mix of Layton-esque puzzles, and an interesting (if hard to follow - if the demo's anything to go by) story, James Noir's Hollywood Crimes has gone from being a game we'd barely even heard of, to being one of our most wanted games for the 3DS. Unfortunately, Ubisoft have yet to unveil a release date beyond the standard "launch period" - but, looking forward to it as we are, we'll be sure to let you know when they do - so make sure you keep checking back!
