Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call

Or the Last Spectre

The last Layton game for the DS and, as of writing, the last Layton game I own. This is a prequel set some years before the first game and we start in London. The professor is assigned a new assistant Emmy Altava. At the same time he gets a letter from Triton, an old classmate that ask for his help in Mysthallery (the name of these places are ridicules I have to say). We set of and quickly find the town under attack from the Spectre, a legendary guardian that now wrecks havoc on the city. Triton have for some reason become the mayor and is so preoccupied with town business that Layton quickly finds the real writer, Triton's son, Luke. Yes, the kid from the other games. So the origin of Luke and Layton's friendship.

He picks up a buss and throws it right back

Luke warns everyone through the family butler where the Spectre shall strike due to observances of lowered water levels in the canals. There's also talk about a witch, a black market of artefacts and for some reason the best police district where every case is closed. Obviously the police is corrupt so Emmy is sent back to London to get some information, and here we have a cameo of Chelmey and Barton since they can't meet the professor, but Emmy is fine since she isn't in the other games. She also picks up one of London's best inspectors that runs... yes, runs to Mysthallery after grappling with a criminal all around London. You uncover the plot that it's all about finding the Golden Garden... what it does I've never got. The Spectre is actually a struggle between a digging machine and a overgrown seal that lives in the lake and plays with the kid Arianna who is accused of being a witch.

Great, we went from Agatha Christie to a Saturday-morning cartoon

After escaping the corrupt cops and infiltrating an "abandoned" factory where they produce the diggers, you confront the citizens in the plaza and reveal the mastermind behind this whole ordeal... THE BUTLER! Of course! Well, it's really not the butler, but someone disguised as him. The villain locked up the butler and Triton's wife to blackmail Triton to help with the search for the garden. He  then gathers the diggers and form a mechanical monsters you have to defeat by disarm each leg and build a catapult. All while the best track of the whole series so far plays.

Great, another f***ing spider!

After the battle the seal slams what's left of the dam that creates the lake and lead Layton and the kids to the Golden Garden, a place so pristine that it is possible to cure whatever disease the "witch"-girl had. And then the seal die. Great, last game they killed Layton's girlfriend who actually already was dead, and now they kill the most adorable animal ever that I actually feel for. *Sob*. This series is beginning to get real serious .*Sob*. Ahem! Now, the "butler" is someone named Descale and is set up as this trilogy of games reoccurring villain. Thing is, he got the same voice actor as the scientist from the last game, and they played around with it since they had him also voice Triton as well, which would point suspicion to him and during the plaza scene it almost looks like it before we pan over to the butler. Nice done game, nice done.

Star Fox: Guard

10 years since the last new Star Fox and they give us 2 at once? 

So they made a little spin-off game to the main game. Basically you are a newly recruited camera operator on a Cornerian mining company and it's your job to protect the companies facilities from ore stealing robots. So with 12 cameras you overlook the facilities and has to shoot the robots with the same cameras. You play three missions in facilities A, B and C and then there is a boss fight and then a new planet. Rinse and repeat. Small dose fun, You can also play online and be on the other side of the camera sending robots on some poor schmuck sitting out his first camera job. Nothing else to say since the story is just protect the company to get rich. Works for the set up. Maybe I should have put this on the Star Fox: Zero post, but so could probably Nintendo instead of forcing me to download the game.

Well, enjoy the best teaser trailer for the main game!

Star Fox: Zero

Even Nintendo are jumping on the reboot-train

Finally, the first brand new Star Fox since Star Fox DS back in 2006. And we are back to space battles (with some occasional other vehicle battles on land and space, as of this moment I haven't seen if they brought back the Blue Mariner for some underwater action). Besides the Arwing and Landmaster two new vehicles have been built. The Gyrowing for stealth missions and an alternate mode for the Arwing, the Walker. Fine and dandy, but what everyone talks about is the controls. Since the Wii U has two screens Nintendo decided to force it upon us to use it. So for precision shooting it's recommended to look at the gamepad and to get an overlook over the battle watch the TV. You can possible just do it with the gamepad, but I notice the TV is preferable to watch most of the time due to the overview. Which causes this game to be one of the several Wii U games I probably won't play as much due to not having a TV to use alone since their is more people in the household for the moment. The next thing is that the gyro in the gamepad controls the lasers. A bit like Splatoon and once you get a hang of it it works rather fine. It at least takes away the problem of you needing to be a target for enemy fire to get in a hit or two. 

For a game called Star Fox there doesn't seem to exist a fox vechicle

The story then... it's just the same story as Star Fox (Starwing) and Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars), but with teleportation devices. Apparently what Andross was working on was teleportation devices that he began using for... no, he didn't want to share them so General Pepper had him locked up on Venom... no, James McCloud put him on another dimension with the teleportation devices where he somehow built an army and then dragged the whole planet Venom with him to launch the attack on Corneria. It's a reboot basically and the story wasn't much to write home about anyway. I can't say it stuck much with me afterwards either since nothing is really new. Star Fox: Assault was better in my opinion with Pigma's transformation, Peppy and Peppers sacrifices, even Star Wolfs sacrifices and the enemy was interesting and a bit scary... for a borg ripoff. It missed something and really, how much of a surprise was it that Venom disappeared when we have the teleportation holes all over the game? 

Looks like someone been watching the Terminator-series

The graphics looks nice and the music is fine, still prefer the soundtrack from the original game and apparently you could get access to it by either stepping up your game and 100 % percent it with collecting medals and highscores and with it unlock the original look of the Arwing as an alternate mode together with the music... or just use any Star Fox amiboo. I'm mighty tempted since I clearly can't bother spending the 40-100 hours I would need to actually train myself to get good at this game. Eh, it's not a bad game and you get used to the controls, it's just... I suck at these games.

Professor Layton and the Lost Future

Or the Unbound Future in America, the Pal title has a bit more edge to it in my opinion

Third game and I think I begin to get a hang of it. And so you expect the normal thing doesn't appear to be and so on and non-murders and what not. So we start with a buss ride in London and retelling of an event couple of days earlier during the show case of the worlds first time machine, constructed by... some guy. Layton and Luke are present as well as Inspector Chelmey and Barton together with the prime minister of Great Britain, Bill Hawks. He holds a speech and then gets pulled into showcasing the machine. And the thing blows up.

Wow, 5 minutes and they blow up the prime minister

The scientist and workers all disappears in the blast and a short while later Layton receives a note from Luke, sent 10 years into the future that instructs them to find a clock shop in London where they have a time machine set up as a portal through a worm hole in time. Through the looking glass and Layton and Luke is in the London of the future, a dystopian city ruled by the mafia led by the fearsome, cold-hearted and puzzle obsessed archeologist, Mr Herzel Layton!?! They end up in a casino where they met the Luke of the future and as they try to find the future Layton. On their way out they get cornered by the Family that starts to shoot at them and Layton responds with an on the fly machine gun loaded with casino coins or tokens.

Mobsters, blown up prime ministers and a dictator Layton and the current Layton even uses a weapon, damn!

After getting away you all conclude that Future Layton is in Chinatown, but the professor decides to travel back to current day in order to get some facts about certain details of the mystery and by mistake brings with him Chelmey, Barton and Flora as he tries to get information about a mystery of an explosion 10 years ago. An explosion from an earlier attempt to build a time machine that caused the death of 11 people, one of the casualties being Claire, Layton's girlfriend. Which could explain the drastic change of behaviour since we also learns that some of the worlds greatest scientists have disappeared, several in the fields concerning time travel. After some snooping around you enter the pagoda where future Layton is said to reside and you climb the tower. Very reminiscent of the end games of the two earlier games. You enter the final room at the top and confronts this Layton, and it appears it's not (duh!), it's the scientist from the beginning who had a fake name and really was Dimitri Allen, the scientist working on the time machine that killed Claire, who also was his assistant, together with Bill Hawks who he has tied up. He drops a cage on you and gloat over his victory over the intelligent Layton when the professor takes of his hat and...

Wait... WHAT!!!

It turns out that the professor in order to get the upper hand enlisted the master of disguise, Don Paolo... or as we get to learn, Paul. And we finally learns his motive, he was a student at the same university as Layton, but one class higher and had a crush on Claire so when he found out about her and Layton he vowed revenge. And still he helps Layton in this game. Really, as an arch-nemesis he fails on so many levels, but it is rather fun to have him around. Layton steps forward, saves his friends and challenge Allen, but he escapes with Bill Hawks and the others escape during a secret passage. They regroup and search for a hidden facility where the time machine is being built. In the meantime Layton to make sense of a woman he has seen all over the future London who looks just like Claire. They enter the facility and met up with the scientists that have been kidnapped, but are again cornered by the Family, but they escape with the help of Celeste, Claire's sister that have followed them through time in order to uncover the mystery of her sisters death. You escape the facility and enters the Families main base... a restaurant by the Thames. The bartender is none other than Dimitri Allen, but Layton reveals the biggest twist of them all. The future London is all an lie, an underground cavern under London where Allen constructed a replica of London to trick the scientist to help him build a time machine. The time machine in the clock shop is nothing else than an elevator. But not only that, Allen is just a pawn in the hands of the true criminal mind. The Future Luke... or more correctly Clive... Clive Dove I assume. Unbeknownst to Dimitri he has constructed a weapon to show people like Bill Hawks that forced the test of the time machine 10 years ago so he could sell the engine which killed all those people, two of them being Clive's real parents. Hawks hushed it up with his new found money and later rose to the post of prime minister. Clive kidnaps Flora and starts to bombard "Future London" while making it's way up the real London.

Great, Clive's weapon is the spider from Wild Wild West

So Layton and Luke enter the machine with the Laytonmobile Don Paolo constructed. That is, you drive up a hill so you jump atop one of the legs and from there enter the construct. You rescue Flora and with the assistance of Celeste who boarded it with Don Paolo's flying machine locates the generator in order to short circuit the machine to stop it from wrecking havoc. But, the generator is wired to a machine measuring the heartbeats of Bill Hawks who is trapped in the generator so you have to wire it to a clock that will give you 10 minutes necessary to short circuit the engine. They escape to the Laytonmobile and tries to drive down the failing weapon, but they fall of the rail and as they tumble down Layton pushes a red button Don Paolo showed him (not when I was watching I assure you) and it of course turns into a flying car. Celeste jumps of to rescue Clive who lies unconscious in the control room. Layton drops of all passengers and heads back to rescue Celeste and Clive. All are saved, Clive is arrested... and I assume Dimitri as well, but we don't see it. And now yet another twist is revealed. Celeste is really Claire who was sent 10 years into the future, but only for a brief time and she is about to return to her real time... right before the explosion that will kill her. Ending credits and the next sad scene as Luke is about to travel with his family across the Atlantic leaving Layton and London behind. Gee, sadness all around. 

I know I joked that the other games missed murdered people and pulled a Disney revival on those who appeared to die, and pretty much expected the same so you can't fool me with "blowing up" the prime minister, but 11 dead people. And they stay dead... well except Claire, that lives during the course of the game although is technically already dead. Also the ending hint on a future game... but I know that the 3 other games in the series is a prequel trilogy so they must have changed plans. Still, only got one more game and the question is when I will get my hand on the 2 3DS games.