Professor Layton and the Lost Future / Unwound Future

I thought that Unwound Future was likely to be my least favourite of the Layton games. They’d had some far-fetched concepts before, but usually confined to the ends of their games, but this one looked likely to have the silly idea of time travel throughout, which always ends up with plot holes and usually contradictory theories coexisting. Besides, it seemed the most surreal effort yet – sure, there was a hamster with a funny voice in the last game but that was confined to a minigame and you sort of thought that Luke could just be interpreting the voice internally – but this one not only had a talking parrot minigame (fair enough), but a genuine talking rabbit with a tale of woe to unfold and an annoying talking bee that gets swatted halfway through and is presumed dead right up until the credits.

And yet – it’s actually turned out to be my favourite of the trilogy. The essential gameplay is of course the same – you go from place to place solving puzzles that are by and large only tricky enough to divert the player for a few moments, but still hard enough to give a sense of satisfaction. So that leaves the overall story.

I like the setting the most of the three – the first’s village was cute but limited, the train of the second rather repetitive, leaving a strange but very much recognisable London for this one, which works well. Some way through, Luke had a little scene in front of a statue that was very subtly done (if you didn’t stop to watch his standing animation before clicking him with your stylus, and didn’t read the journal entry afterwards, you may not have realised what he was doing) that made me think this might be my least favourite Layton game with my favourite scene in it, but then the final twists came. The final twists have rather been the weaknesses of Layton games. The first game’s makes sense within the world in hindsight, but at the time I was hoping for something that required much less of a sci-fi leap of faith to believe, while the second relies on everyone affected by hallucinogenic gas to perceive the exact same hallucination – not just for a moment but long-term. This one, aside from a rather mawkish bit to try and have the traditional tearjerking ending, actually went in reverse: it twisted an unbelievable supernatural premise to one that again required absurd sci-fi, but at least made everything logical.

The series continues to be one of the best handheld games around, and obviously for a relatively low budget – I’m annoyed at the next game excluding ‘London Life’ for the UK release (but having it on the US cart) so for the first time will likely not buy a copy, but I’ll certainly be playing it. I’d just get the US version – but then I’d have to put up with that awful voice they have for Luke. And it doesn’t even have the advantage this version’s US release had – a rather better title.