The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Because I enjoyed 999 so much, I was jonesing for more story-based games to play in bed after I utterly devoured it. It was then I remembered that I never did finish Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, so I polished that off.

Now, gameplaywise, there’s not much to say. It’s a Layton game. They did some smart things in this one, like adding “puzzle battles” to integrate puzzles more completely into the plot, which was a nice addition, but in the end, you’re walking around, getting some plot, and solving mostly unrelated brain teasers. That’s fine. It’s still fun.

The plot, though. Man.

Seriously, the robots in the first game were kind of cute, and made a sort of sense. It was neat. I was down with that. Then came the second game, where the explanation for a lot of the game was “EVERYONE IS COMPLETELY HIGH” which is a horrible explanation. Drugs simply do not work that way. Plus, it’s amazing how it doesn’t upset anyone to learn they’ve been high for hours, and hallucinating. No reaction. No “oh shit, what other horrible effects could this gas have?” Nope.

Anyway, I was expecting that kind of bullshit with this game too, and I got it. Really? A gigantic “movie set” the size of a lot of London underneath London? And nobody in it knows? Been there for a few weeks? I mean, seriously, someone must have walked far enough to see the edge of this cavern. Plus, the reason given for building this obscenely expensive place was not one that I bought in any way. The only way you can get scientists to work for you is to make them think they’re in the future? But again, I was prepared for that bullshit ending.

What I was not prepared for was them undoing their own bullshit ending and making its purpose even more stupid. At the end, they tell us that, hey, one of the characters actually HAS traveled in time. Time Travel is possible. All that stupid ridiculousness about building an underground city doesn’t matter that much, because hey, you can travel through time!
What the fuck.
The series is going so, so far out of its way to remove “supernatural” elements from its stories, even to the point of making these ridiculous explanations for what’s going on, and then they decide that, no, there really is time travel after they spent all that time telling us there isn’t for a really dumb reason. I just don’t understand it. The story would have worked if the time travel was real. Like, seriously, you’d need to change almost none of it. It’s all so stupid.

Again, I still love Layton. The games are fun to play. But blergh, that sort of thing really frustrates me. If you want more Layton fun, though, of course get Unwound Future. But man, that plot…