Review: Puzzle Agent (PC, Wii)
Sometimes, a mystery is surrounded by a puzzle; sometimes dozens of small, intricate puzzles that would confound and befuddle your average government agent.
Hidden away in the depths of FBI headquarters is the office of Nelson Tethers. Tethers is the top (and only) agent in the bureau’s Department of Puzzle Research. When a conundrum is too discombobulating for the rest of the FBI, it is up to Agent Tethers to elucidate the situation in Telltale’s latest, Puzzle Agent.
The first thing you’ll notice with Puzzle Agent is a departure from Telltale’s usual style of point and click adventure gaming. Sure, those elements are there in a small way, but the main focus of the game is on brain teasers. It is no secret that Puzzle Agent was heavily inspired by Level-5′s popular Professor Layton series on the Nintendo DS. They come right out and say as much in the game’s description on their website.
Set in the snowy town of Scoggins, MN, it is your job to find out why the town’s eraser factory has shut down. The factory provides erasers to the White House, and is Scoggin’s main source of income; which is why it’s sudden closure is so suspicious.
Much like the Layton series that inspired it, Puzzle Agent has you wandering the town, finding and solving logic puzzles to continue the storyline. The puzzles are worked into the plot a little smoother than they are in Layton, and are handled in mostly humorous ways. The puzzles themselves vary quite a bit in difficulty. As with all logic puzzles, once you “get” the answer, you’ll wonder how you didn’t see it in the first place.
If you do get stumped, Puzzle Agent has a really good hint system built in. There are three levels of hints, which start as a nudge in the right direction and end with more or less giving you the answer. Once the puzzle is solved, you are given a rating based on how many guesses it took you to solve and how many hints used. This made me try my hardest to not use any hints and only make a guess once I was absolutely sure I had the answer correct.
But they don’t give you an infinite number of hints either. As it turns out, chewing gum helps Agent Tethers think, but the town is all out of gum! As you traverse the town, you will find ABC gum stuck to things around the city which you can collect. These are what you spend to take a hint on puzzles. I’m happy to say I didn’t end up needing to use too many pieces of the gum that I collected on my adventure, but even if you do, there seems to be plenty of the stuff hidden around the city. Running out was never a concern.
I had fun playing through Puzzle Agent. The art by Graham Annable added a humorous edge to the games strange atmosphere. The writing will appeal to those that enjoy X-Files or Twilight Zone story types, as long as you don’t mind them being on the wacky side of things. The gameplay is casual enough that it should appeal to gamers of all levels. Puzzle Agent is an easy recommendation for the puzzle lover in your life.
This review is based on review code of the PC version of Puzzle Agent provided to us by Telltale Games.
Tags: adventure games, logic puzzles, PC, Puzzle Agent, Telltale Games, Wii
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 30th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:I don’t know why, but the art style immediatly made me think of Canada. Then I looked up the artist, and sure enough, he is from Canada.
June 30th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Check out his IMDB page. He has worked on some cool stuff:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0030253/
July 1st, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Wesley "wesley" Wesley says:Is it Lynch-inspired as the site suggests? I really want this joint.
July 1st, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Here’s the thing with Lynch-inspired stuff… I’ve never seen any of his stuff, so I can’t say.
It is a commonly used phrase when describing strange things in various media. Maybe I should check out his albums.
(yes, that last part was a joke)
July 1st, 2010 at 7:36 pm
shaolinjesus says:yeah silly, Lynch is a band not just a guy.
July 6th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Heat Man says:Is this game on 360? I think I’ve seen Puzzle Agent 2 listed.
July 6th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Puzzle Quest 2 just came out on the 360.
That is the one that is Bejeweled meets an RPG.
July 6th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Heat Man says:Ooohh, darn. Not as interested in that.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:The TellTale site makes mention of a Wii version, but I don’t think it’s out yet. Telltale has released their games on Wii in varying ways. I believe Tales of Monkey Island and Strong Bad are available on WiiWare, yet their Sam & Max games are collected on a retail disc. I would imagine, though, since they already have the Wii logo on the site and there’s only one episode of Puzzle Agent so far that it will be WiiWare.
July 7th, 2010 at 12:57 am
Puzzle Agent - review | The Warp Pipe says:[...] Full review here [...]
July 7th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Puzzle Agent is currently 10% off on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31270/
August 16th, 2011 at 5:01 am
Barrel Roll! #129 - “A Ghost Mouse Screaming” - WingDamage.com says:[...] demo from Japan had to explore and was left craving more. Adam finally got around to the first Puzzle Agent game with mixed results, then went back in time to play the Game Boy classics (classics here [...]
October 14th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
I Did the Math and Chiptunes = WIN - WingDamage.com says:[...] you’ll hear great artists old and new including C-jeff (Preschtale), Disasterpeace (FEZ, Puzzle Agent), Danimal Cannon (Metroid Metal, Armcannon), and many [...]