dev, computing and games

Finished Professor Layton and the Last Specter (3DS),
and the bonus game that the USA version ships with, Professor Layton- Little London

This is the fourth installment in the Professor Layton series. The puzzles seem, on average, easier (maybe too easy?) compared to previous installments. But there is enough variety to keep it interesting, and the side puzzles like the model train set are fun and worthwhile.

Little London looks and plays a lot like Harvest Moon, if you isolate it down to all of the cutesy character interaction and none of the turnip farming.

I have a big problem with Little London.

The mechanics of the game are as follows: you have two stats, Wealth and Happiness, whereby Wealth is accrued from working at jobs and fulfilling requests from the various townspeople; Happiness is acquired also by fulfilling requests, however-- when you buy anything that costs X, X/2 will be added to your Happiness. Therefore, after unlocking the highest Wealth-giving quests in the game (and also the train ticket job), it's just a matter of buying expensive things over and over and until you reach the Happiness desired. Optionally, you can sell things (for less than was paid for) and buy them again to streamline this grind late-game.

Is this the kind of value system we want to be broadly promoting to people? Materialism??

Your character begins the game with a home and basic needs met. The Wealth is just for buying frivolous things. New furnishings, new clothes. Cosmetic accessories. These are great, sure, but to directly, numerically link the resulting happiness they provide with how much they cost feels totally unrealistic. Am I going to be ten times happier with a $200 curtains compared to $20? Should I really spend $5000 on a golden stuffed animal? There are some material things I've purchased which made me *less* happy, for example the Lion King for Super Nintendo.

 

 

August 18th, 2017 at 7:36 am | Comments & Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

This might be the best game, ever. Reason: Can't remember the last time I've come across a game with literally zero grind. No repetitive action. For the 'meat' of the game, solving puzzles- each puzzle is different with no repeats, nor any cheesy reprising the same puzzle with an only-slightly-different flavor. Shouldn't be such a novel thing but it really is.

Also no puzzles that rely on pure anagrams, big-time number crunching, external knowledge of other languages / scripts.  Nice.

March 14th, 2016 at 9:09 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (0) | Permalink