Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Whew. It's been over a month since I've beaten a video game, and even though this one is the most recent addition to my backlog, making it a zero-sum month for me on the video game front, I'm just glad to have shaken some dust off. Will this be the spark that ignites a flurry of September game beatings? Let's hope so! As far as the game itself is concerned, Professor Layton is a "puzzle-solving" series for the DS which is really just a simple point-and-click adventure interspersed with mazes, riddles, brain teasers, and other logic puzzles. I played the first game in the series back in the summer of 2008 after borrowing it from Sween. (Sometimes I miss those pre-backlog-focused times when borrowing a game from a friend made just as much sense as playing stuff in your own collection. Sigh.) I enjoyed it a great deal, beating every single puzzle the game threw at me and even several downloadable puzzles. There was a certain charm to the English gentleman in a top hat and his apprentice - an orphan, perhaps? - in a flat cap and sweater, walking around solving riddles as if it was the most important or interesting thing in the world to do. The story was iffy, but I chalked that up as part of the game's overall tone. Maybe three years later I'm a hardened cynic, or maybe Back-Blogged has changed the way I like to experience and beat games, but I just didn't enjoy Diabolical Box as much as I did Curious Village. The story was laughably bad, but probably not even as bad as the first game's. Several puzzles were ridiculously easy or straightforward, but that's not a cause for alarm when you've still got sixty games waiting to be beaten. No, I think the reason I was nonplussed by this game is that the only part of the game worth playing - the puzzle-solving - was almost entirely optional. I could have easily progressed through the story solving very few puzzles along the way, but that would have been a tedious bore covered from wall-to-wall in "move here" commands and excessive dialogue. But every time I tapped on a villager to see if they had any good riddles for me, I knew I was wasting my time as far as beating the game was concerned. I realize that Back-Blogged has totally changed the way I play games. Optional side quests take a backseat to the overall game count, and I play games now merely to beat them instead of to enjoy them. I "suffer" from an over-saturation of games and even the most widely renowned of those I've yet to play are like nuisances in their own way. I'd rather beat a game quickly than take time to stop and smell the side quest roses. This is probably an issue I could seek to alleviate by slowing down my trek through my backlog. But at the same time, how could I be going any slower? It's an interesting dilemma and it's one that'll only grow more disconcerting as the backlog weighs heavier on my shoulders with time. If only Layton and Luke could come up with a solution for this puzzle!