When the famous problem-solver Professor Layton and his plucky assistant Luke head to the town of St Mystère to investigate the secret of the Golden Apple, they have no idea just how many mysteries await them. Fortunately, their problem-solving skills fit right into a town where every inhabitant is obsessed with setting puzzles and brainteasers, but even the trickiest riddle is just an appetiser compared to the deepest secrets of St Mystère.

The first in the Professor Layton series of puzzle games, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the perfect game for casual DS players who are ready to move beyond Brain Training. A collection of riddles, puzzles and brain teasers, the game is easy to pick up and play, and what it lacks in replay value, it more than makes up for in addictiveness.

St Mystère

Set in the context of a framing story, the object of Professor Layton and the Curious Village is to go from place to place within St Mystère, talking to inhabitants and solving the puzzles they pose. These puzzles take the form of classic brainteasers, encompassing everything from moving blocks to try to free a ball from a maze to rearranging matchsticks and solving riddles. Many of the puzzles are straightforward for anyone with half a brain, but even the most experienced puzzle solver is likely to trip up once or twice. Fortunately, if you are well and truly stuck, it is possible to dip into your limited supply of Hint coins to unlock up to three hints per puzzle- and certainly, by the time you have the third one, it will be entirely obvious what to do.

In fact, a challenge greater than solving the puzzles is simply trying to find them all, for whilst some are essential for moving the story forward, many puzzles are optional. Talking to every character you meet is essential, as is investigating everything you can see- a random press of the stylus could reveal a hint coin or even a hidden puzzle. Luckily, any puzzles you might be in danger of missing forever are gathered up and sent to Granny Riddleton’s shack, a place where you can visit and solve them at their leisure.

To spur you on further, the game also has a number of extras in the menu. As you solve certain puzzles, you’ll unlock painting scraps which can be reassembled into a complete picture and furniture which can be used to customise Luke and Layton’s rooms at the inn (take care that you give the right furnishings to the right person). Completing the game also unlocks some challenging extra puzzles that will keep you coming back for that little bit more. True, these extras can only delay the inevitable moment when the game holds nothing more for you, but they do help to keep it interesting for longer.

Story

As a mystery tale, it is no wonder that Professor Layton and the Curious Village spends most of the game setting up various plot points, before steadily revealing them all in the closing chapters. Perhaps surprisingly, you can’t reveal or investigate these main mysteries independently- instead, you are entirely confined to following the story as the game dictates. It’s something of a shame that you can’t have a guess at the main mysteries yourself, but ultimately the point of the game is to get you solving the smaller puzzles whilst it takes care of the larger ones.

Audiovisual

Visually, Professor Layton sticks with a clean and simplistic look, eschewing the usual attractive anime styles for a more old-fashioned appearance that fits well with the series without being particularly aesthetically pleasing. Background music is similarly simple yet fitting, whilst the English voice acting is apt if stereotypical (imagine a typical English gentleman and his plucky Cockney sidekick). Overall the presentation isn’t anything special, but it fits the game well.

Final Thoughts

A fun and diverting puzzle game, Professor Layton may lack in replay value, but first time around it should prove absorbing for casual players and the more dedicated gamer alike. I probably won’t be returning to it anytime soon, but it was certainly enjoyable enough to have me looking forward to the imminent European release of the second instalment in the series.

Are you ready to take to the virtual kitchen? Pick up your pots and pans, assemble your ingredients and prepare to brave the world of Cooking Mama, where no recipe is too complex and no procedure too daring in the pursuit of that perfectly baked recipe? Can you prove yourself as skilled as Mama?

Everything from farm simulations to fireworks display games has come under scrutiny here at Azure Flame, but now the time has come to take cooking out of the kitchen and put it back where it belongs- in a handheld gaming console. In fact, there is a recipe book ‘game’ for DS, but when it comes to something you can actually play, what other choice is there than the Cooking Mama series?

Rather than having any specific sort of level plan to follow, the object of Cooking Mama is simply to cook the Japanese-style recipes available to you, unlocking more in the process (there’s also an option to combine different recipes, which I like to use to formulate the most bizarre combinations in an attempt to ‘break’ the game). Each recipe is broken down into a series of processes, each of which can be considered as its own little mini-game, all of them dependent on the touch screen, and occasionally the inbuilt microphone as well. Use your stylus to chop, cut, peel, drain, grate, fry and boil- but make you sure you don’t overcook the food or run of time, because an irate Mama will brand you a failure in the kitchen.

Don’t worry if you can’t get the hang of a recipe, however, because as well as being able to make it ‘for real’, you can use practise mode to repeat any of the stages in the process that you find difficult. And getting it right isn’t just for perfectionists, because the better you do, the more points you get at the end. And if even that isn’t enough for you, you can also use the “Use Skill” option to test your limits at the different skills in the game- with some of the higher levels seeming impossible for any human to achieve. Yes, you may think you’re the fastest with the stylus, but if you’re too fast, the game won’t register it- you have to find the right balance between speed, pressure and some indefinable skill that makes the game accept your faster presses.

Even with that in the mind, the game is great fun to start with, laced with an addictiveness that will have the entire family arguing over who gets to play next. Unfortunately, as with all games of this type, Cooking Mama just doesn’t have the staying power- there’s only so many times you can chop, peel and add ingredients before it all gets boring and repetitive. And once the prospect of unlocking more recipes has died away, there’s little incentive to continue.

Although the game’s claim that you can share recipes with friends had me believing that there was a full online mode, it is somewhat misleading- all you can do is send a one-recipe demo to another DS, which in my case was a hamburger recipe with all the instructions in Italian (“Prepara una hamburger”). This is somewhat disappointing, but perhaps not unsurprising.

Final Thoughts

Although Cooking Mama starts out as being great fun, it’s a game that soon loses its lustre due to its simplistic and repetitive nature. I’m hoping that the second game has more variety, but for now this first instalment in the series is good for brief diversions, and little more.

Extra: the cooking process

Tear: Pull the leaves off your vegetable one by one, but be careful as if you do it too quickly, the game will decide you’ve failed.

Chop: Keep tapping the knife to chop- this is one of the skills where it won’t register properly if you do it too quickly.

Cut: More tedious and difficult than chopping, this time have to move the stylus up and down to make the knife saw off slices. You have be thorough to get the slice cut off, but of course time is against you.

Add: Add the ingredients in the order shown- it sounds easy and it usually is, but bear in mind that the picture of the ingredient to add starts out jumbled up and only gradually becomes clear.

Grate: Move the vegetable back and forth on the grater and tap occasionally to shake off excess- generally easy except in the higher levels of the “Use Skill” mode.

Fold dumplings: Add the filling to a sheet of pastry, then fold over and finish the edges- one of my favourite tasks for the round sheets, but for some reason it’s difficult to fold up the square ones.

Cut tendon: A memorisation game- see where the game shows you to cut the meat, and then draw lines where indicated. It’s usually easy enough outside of “Use Skill” mode, especially as if you try to cut in the wrong place, nothing will appear.

Pan-fry and stew: These two skills are Parappa the Rapper style game play, as you add ingredients, adjust the heat, stir, press, flip and blow into the microphone with precise timing. For some reason, stewing is easier than pan-frying, although a single mistake can cause failure.

Pound the rice: Hit the rice with the mallet, but make sure not to hit the hand that’s folding it, or you’ll slow right down and lose time.

Crack an egg: Hit the egg against the bowl and then pour it in- straightforward if you keep your cool.

Tenderise meat: Hit the meat with the tenderiser- easy and stress relieving.

Peel shrimp, egg, beansprout: Move the shrimp’s head up and down and then peel off the outer layer, tap the egg to remove the shell or wiggle the end of the beansprout back and forth to break off the tip. Since you usually have to prepare more than one in the time limit, you have to get into the flow of it.

Place on stick: Memorise the example kebab the game shows you, and then make one exactly the same- it’s like that old Mastermind game.

Charcoal grill: Tap the fans to move the hot air over the kebabs as they drop in, but make sure to tap them when they’re cooked just right, or they’ll go away undercooked or burnt. Fun, but a bit hectic.

Cook amount told: A simple addition and memorisation exercise- Mama gives you three numbers, and you cook their sum. All you have to do it place the right number in the pan- the actual cooking is taken care of automatically.

Peel vegetables: One of the harder skills, you have to run the potato peeler over the vegetable, but it’s very difficult to get the game to register what you’re doing- you need slow and steady strokes in the right place, and all the while time is running out. Probably my least favourite part of the game.

Bread: Roll the food in breadcrumbs, but be sure to tap it vigorously or it won’t pick up enough breadcrumbs. Easy once you get the knack of it.

Riceballs, sushi, meatballs, stuffing: Make sure to pick the right amount out of the mix for each ball by circling it with the stylus- too small or large and Mama won’t be impressed.

Peel hot: Quickly peel the skin off a potato before your hand gets too hot.

Roll out dough: Move the rolling pin back and forth to fill the frame, but don’t spill out over the edges.

Remove foam: Draw round the foam at the edge of the pot to remove it- easy at first but it gets harder in Use Skill mode.

Weigh: Weigh out the right amount by circling the excess to remove it- it sounds easy, but you have a limited amount of goes to get it right.

Sauté: There are actually two types of sautéing- one which involves constantly flipping the food to make sure it doesn’t burn and another in which you must add ingredients with different cooking times in the right order so that they’re all perfectly cooked at the same time. The first is very difficult to get right since most of the time the food burns, whilst the latter is a mix of guesswork and common sense as you’re not told how long each food takes to cook.

Oven cook: Probably the simplest process in the game- Mama tells you how long to set the oven timer, and you set it.

Drain: Tip the pan to strain the food into the sieve, but be careful- too slow and you won’t get it all done in time, too fast and the food will go flying.

Takoyaki: Pour the right amount of batter into the small holes in the special frying pan, then circle each takoyaki to take it out when cooked. A fast and hectic process.

Arrange: Arrange your finished food on the plate with any side salad or draw a picture on your omelette with sauce. It’s virtually impossible to go wrong, unless you forget to put your food on the plate.

Mix: Draw circles to spin the bowl and mix the ingredients, but make sure the gauge is in the green area when the time runs out- get too vigorous and you’ll fail as it all goes spinning out of control.

Slice: Draw a line where the game tells you to slice vegetables and meat- very easy and straightforward.

Knead: Draw lines where the arrows tell you until the meter is full- another easy process.

Coat: Roll foods in flour, rotate them in butter and then put them on a plate- multiple tasks in one process can make the timing tight on this one.

Deep fry: Drop the food in the deep fryer, wait until it floats to the top and browns a bit, and then put it on the plate. There’s no time limit so you can do one at a time (recommended), but it is possible to drop the food and lose it forever.

Many generations ago, the spirits of Mana battled against the dark witch Anise and sealed her away, before the whole thing faded into legend. Now, however, the forces of good and evil are about to do battle again, thanks to the actions of a bored king and his ambitious general. It all begins one night when a Peddan soldier named Roget and the crew of the airship Nightswan are sent to scout behind enemy lines, but when they learn that their own superiors are plotting to start a war with all the nations of the world, Roget and his allies follow their hearts and resolve to use the power of Mana to combat the encroaching evil.

With previous games in the series being skewed more towards the RPG end of the gaming spectrum, I was somewhat surprised on starting Heroes of Mana to discover that it was more of an RTS game, but that it was a rare RTS for the Nintendo DS. Once the familiarisation phase was over, however, I settled down to actually play the game- only to discover that this was the one RTS game that would actually be at about my level.

Playing the game

Heroes of Mana is spread across twenty-seven chapters, all of which, apart from the first, feature a single battle mission sandwiched in between cut scenes (chapter one is all cut scenes). Overall, the main game should only take about fifteen hours or so to finish, but there’s more to it than that- as you complete chapters 2-26, you will unlock bonus battles that play out on the same maps, but with different objectives. Since there’s no levelling up for the characters in the game, you can’t use these bonus battles to improve your innate stats, but you might be able to find rare items, as well as experience that warm sense of completion for each bonus stage you clear. And for really hardcore fans, saving clear game data after you defeat the final boss will let you replay the game in Hard Mode for added ‘enjoyment’.

Between battles and cut scenes, you occasionally get the illusion of being in control of the Nightswan on the world map; what this actually means is that you get the chance to go to menu to save, change equipment and look in the game’s reference section before tapping a button marked ‘Go!’ that automatically sends the ship to its next destination. Don’t worry, though, this isn’t the only time you can save- pressing Start during battle lets you save in one of the game’s three slots at any time.

Battle

Once you’ve waded your way through the appropriate amount of cut scenes, you’ll finally be ready for the meat of the chapter- the actual mission. Of course, before it starts, you’ll be able to pick the named characters you want to use (up to five for most missions) and set up their equipment. Characters can’t change their weapons, but they can equip one each of three different types of accessory to enhance their HP, attack power, movement speed and attack range, although it’ll be up to you to decide on the right balance for each character. Once you start acquiring Mana spirits, you can also assign them to characters, which lets a character use a particular spell in battle.

Once you’re ready, your selected named characters and the Nightswan will be sent out to the battlefield, and here the fun begins. Unlike other RTS games where you build your headquarters in one location and work outwards from there, in Heroes of Mana, the Nightswan is your base; you build facilities and summon units from within it, and then move it about the battlefield as you wish. There is, of course, a catch- only when the Nightswan is attached to an anchored hook can you summon units and gather resources, but this leaves the hook vulnerable to attack from enemy ground-based units. When the Nightswan is freely floating, however, it is equally vulnerable to missile and flying units- and if your ship goes down, it’s game over.

Although you begin the level in command of your named troops, you’re going to need more than that to cut through the enemy hordes, and so in true RTS fashion you’re going to need to gather resources, build facilities and summon up to 25 units (except, of course, for those inevitable levels where you can’t use the Nightswan and have to rely on whatever forces you’re given at the start). The first order of business is to create a gatherer unit base and summon the all-important gatherer units to collect up the two types of resource in the game- Gaia’s Stones and Treant’s Berries. Stones are needed for building facilities, whilst berries are instrumental for summoning units- and of course, each Gaia and Treant will only offer a limited amount of resources, so you must spend them wisely.

With your resources at hand, you can start building other facilities within the Nightswan- in the first level you’ll only have a ground unit base, but as the game progresses you’ll unlock progressively more facilities and stronger units to summon. The bulk of your forces will be divided into four types- ground units, heavy units, flying units and missile units, which exist in a rock-paper-scissors type hierarchy in which heavy beats ground, flying beats heavy, missile beats flying and ground beats missile (where the superior unit does double damage against and takes half damage from the inferior one). To be honest, though, up until the last few missiles where class becomes important, it is possible to just brute force your way through a level by summoning lots of heavy units- their high HP and attack makes them tanks.

As well as these staple units, you’ll also have your named characters, who count as ‘Leader Units’- not only are they outside of the hierarchy, but they’ll even strengthen any generic units they surround with their unique abilities (for example, bow user Yurchael strengthens all missile units around him). Naturally, however, they aren’t invincible- so putting them in the line of fire could lead to some casualties, with the death of Roget (and occasionally other, usually weak, characters on certain levels) resulting in game over.

The final unit type that you can take command of are special units; generic units that exist outside of the normal hierarchy and usually have unique skills- everything from moles that burrow underground to spy on the enemy to giant eyeballs that shoot out lasers falls into this category. Enemy special units can be a pain, but it is entirely possible to get through the entire game without ever using up resources on them yourself.

As well as bases for your various units, there are a few other useful facilities that will be added to your repertoire. First off is the Healing House, which slowly regenerates the HP of nearby units (provided they’re standing still), and later on you’ll get the Resurrection House, which lets you bring back any deceased named characters. Also on offer are elemental shrines, based on the Mana spirits you’ve collected. Although they’re massively expensive, these shrines let you perform powerful summons which deal significant damage to all enemies on the field- it may sound a bit of a cheap move, but given that you’ll rarely have enough resources to use it, it doesn’t actually make that much of a difference to the game as a whole.

Once your units are on the field, you can select either all units of the same type or draw around a group with the stylus to select them- you can then point to where you want them to go on the map. Of course, there will be a fog of war hiding resources and enemies in any place you haven’t explored, but you’ll still be able to see the geographical layout of the area, with the top screen displaying an overall map that can be temporarily switched to the touch screen for faster scrolling.

Unfortunately, it is here that the flaws of the game begin to assert themselves, thanks to the simple fact that unit AI is so shoddy. Asking a group of units to move from A to B may sound simple enough, but their path-finding ability is so awful that what you’ll find is that by the time they get to where they’re going, your regimented troops will have become spread out all over the map, letting the enemy pick them off at leisure. Worse yet, some of the slower units seem to delight in taking the longest route possible, usually resulting in them taking a stroll right through the middle of the enemy encampment. Meanwhile, despite his status as the one unit you absolutely must keep alive, Roget’s stupidity has to be seen to be believed- once you see his HP getting low, your natural response will be to command him to run away to safety, but the idiot blithely wanders back into the thick of battle every chance he gets- usually resulting in an impromptu game over.

Although this is probably the biggest irritation of the game, it has to be admitted that it isn’t the only one. Not only is the touch screen interface so packed with icons and units to select that it’s easy to make a mistake, but the method of either drawing round a group or selecting all units of one type still isn’t enough. Say for example that you want to summon six gatherers and have half go to Gaia and the other half to Treant- obviously you’ll have to draw round groups of three, but with them all clustering round your ship when first gathered, it’ll be hard to pick them out. And since ally units can’t move through each other, build-ups and logjams in the vicinity of your ship occur all too often.

Still, where with a little perseverance in selection you can at least see the status of your units, when it comes to the enemy, all you get is a simple bar indicating their HP- fair enough, you might think, except that how are you supposed to use the unit type hierarchy if you don’t even know what you’re up against? Yes, there is a bestiary in the game, but since you can only look at it outside of battle, it’s hardly the most helpful of reference materials.

Given that all these problems can hinder game play somewhat, it’s probably a relief to learn that Heroes of Mana is largely rather easy- in fact, if the AI hadn’t been so poorly programmed, it would be a cakewalk. As it stands, the increasing complexity of maps and difficulty of getting your units to listen to you does introduce a steady learning curve into the game, with early missions being so easy that at times you can let your characters defeat all the enemies off screen without even looking at them and later ones requiring much more in the way of thought. For the truly dedicated, however, you can unlock Hard Mode by clearing the game once; or use the DS Wi-Fi connection to go online, download missions and compare your ranking with other players.

Story

As far as story goes, Heroes of Mana is one of those games that seems to have been written by committee, with each member contributing their own idea- resulting in an aggressive country that somehow takes over the entire world before withdrawing, an evil general with a tragic past, a bored king and various other plot twists thrown in here and there. The early chapters all follow a depressingly standard pattern in which you complete the mission, only for enemy reinforcements to show up, forcing some deus ex machina to save you. Just as this becomes hilariously predictable, however, the story starts throw in so many half-baked twists that you almost long for the old days.

As far as characters go, pretty much everyone who joins your party is a one-dimensional personality, and whilst some like Valda and Falcon at least join Roget in being important to the story, others like Gemière and D’Kelli are pretty much relegated to expressing themselves via one-liners in cut scenes. Series enthusiasts will, however, be interested to learn that this game is a prequel to Seiken Densetsu 3.

Audiovisual

Visually, Heroes of Mana opts for the tried-and-true method of 2D sprites on an isometric background, resulting in an attractive and pleasing look by handheld standards. Character designs are handled by Ryoma Ito of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance fame, and whilst they aren’t the most complex or aesthetically pleasing pieces to come out of the Square Enix stable, they are still solid and technically sound. The same can be said of the background music, which overall does the job and is decent enough, but isn’t something that will stick in your head or encourage you to acquire the soundtrack.

Final Thoughts

A largely enjoyable and diverting RTS title for DS, Heroes of Mana is let down by its one major flaw- the element of challenge comes less from actual intended difficulty than from a simple case of shoddy AI programming. It won’t satisfy the appetite of hardcore RTS fans, but if you’re the sort of person who wanted to get into the genre and found the more popular titles a bit too challenging, then this is the game for you.