Professor Layton: Puzzles, Top Hats and Mysteries

A bit of a preface before this, if you will. I'm thinking of doing the blog like this. A few structured articles here and there, like this Professor Layton review (a direct copy of my school newspaper article), with the rapidly occurring random thoughts posts.
So there, I've made my decision. I'll try to post semi-regularly, but we all know that doesn't happen.
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The task is simple. You have three wolves and three chickens on one side of a river. You must use a raft to ferry them across. However, only two animals are allowed on the raft at one time and at least one animal has to be on the raft for it to move. Also, if the wolves outnumber the chickens on either side, the chickens will be eaten. The task is not as simple as it might seem.
If that previous paragraph sounds appealing, than Nintendo’s latest DS game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, is the game for you. Professor Layton is, quite simply, a puzzle game tour de force. In it, you control the British top-hat-wearing Professor Layton and his apprentice Luke as they journey to the village of St. Mystere and tackle the mysteries surrounding the death of the famous Baron Reinhold. The game has very artful graphics that are in the similar style to famous European animation such as The Triplets of Belleville and Tin Tin. It’s gameplay echoes a fine blend of the illustrious brain training games on DS such as Brain Age and Big Brain Academy and adventure point-and-click games such as Myst and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. That means, more or less, that this game includes a lot of exploration with a smattering of puzzles.
And these puzzles are really hard. They vary from a bevy of puzzle genres, most of which you may have heard of because they are created by famed Japanese puzzle guru, Akira Tago who is a professor at Chiba University. The game begins with simple yet tricky puzzles that ease you in and then slowly shed the facade with puzzles that will leave you frustrated and trying all kinds of answers for long stretches of time. This might sound bad, but it is not. Never have I played a video game that has challenged my mind as much as this game. It deserves a spot in the growing number of elite Nintendo DS games.
Besides the difficulty, the only negative thing I can say about this game is that it ends, although there are 150 puzzles to play before the game is officially completed. Then again, Nintendo has promised weekly downloadable puzzles using their burgeoning Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. While I have not connected my DS to the internet to download the puzzles, I have heard that they are mighty challenging and have probably driven grown men to tears because of their sheer difficulty. Even better news for fans of this game is that there are still two more games to come out. The series is very popular in Japan and they have already seen the release of a sequel (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box) and the announcement of a final game in the trilogy (Professor Layton and the Time Traveler).