Thanksgiving Break Games

Just a quick update, since I beat a game! A couple days ago I finished Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. I’ll get to that momentarily.

During the break I also played a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. I’m completely breaking my “one game at a time” rule, but I wanted to mix things up a bit. I’m pretty close to the end, I think, and I may go for it. I’m going to try to throw some FF XIII-2 in here and there so it stays fresh.

Oh, and I also started Professor Layton and the Last Specter.

See? I can’t just stick with one game.

Anyway, here’s a quick commentary on Unwound Future. SPOILERS follow.

I liked the ending better than Diabolical Box. The explanation for the “time travel” wasn’t completely bonkers. London had been re-created deep underground and the time machine was actually a large elevator. It’s financially and possibly physically improbable, but it’s within the realm of belief. Less believable to me is how they made a convincing sky — or maybe the London sky really is that dull?

Anyway, this Truman Show-esque ending wasn’t bad. What I’ve liked about the Layton series is that (so far) it hasn’t given supernatural explanations for things. Even if the explanation is insane and improbable (Diabolical Mask), they still give something resembling a scientific explanation. They come close to violating this in Unwound — Layton’s old girlfriend, who had died 10 years ago in a time machine accident, had been propelled 10 years into the future. That’s cool — time travel to the future is definitely possible, given enough speed. What was less cool was that her (ahem) molecules wanted to return to her own time. Then she started glowing, walked around a corner and then presumably went back to when her homesick molecules wanted to be. Then, of course, she was vaporized by the time machine explosion, since they never found her body.

Also, the bad guys “came to [their] senses” remarkably fast at the end of the game. I’m pretty sure that’s not how things work.

Still, all that weirdness didn’t ruin it by any stretch. The puzzles were lots of fun, and the story (while somewhat silly) was entertaining.

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