Okay Geek Farm
PC - Puzzle Agent 2 Review
Alex Tretrop
Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles! The second installment in one of their newest series, Puzzle Agent 2 is a very similar to something you’d find in a Professor Layton title but with quite a few more problems. A mix of point and click and puzzle solving, the game succeeds at being a somewhat enjoyable experience solely on the basis of it being an interesting and well told story along with some creative visuals. However, many of the puzzles feel underexplained and the lack of a more effective hint system make for more han a few annoyances in this otherwise enjoyable experience.
Story
Puzzle Agent 2’s story prides itself on being a lot more comedic then your regular crime drama and it’s humour is generally well delivered and funny. Agent Nelson Tethers of the FBI’s well known Puzzle Agency isn’t liking the conclusion of his case in Scoggins, Minnesota from the first game, leading to his return to discover the truth on the subject of the missing foreman of the eraser factory, the town’s strange inhabitants and the “Hidden People.”
Other than the interesting visual design, Puzzle Agent 2’s primary draw is this case to solve. It’s an interesting experience and often funny, with the witty and well written dialogue bringing out a few chuckles from me. As someone who hasn’t played the original, it doesn’t really summarize the events of the original game and, as such a dialogue heavy game, could do with even a quick recap for new players.
Finally, at times there can be a little too much exposition. You’ll often find yourself listening to a long winded conversation from a character, reach the point where you pick a topic of conversation and discover that there’s another 8 options you have to listen to. It results in you skiping much more of the “filler” topics as they just seem to take up too much time.
Gameplay
When I say Puzzle Agent 2 borrows quite heavily from Professor Layton, it’s so similar you almost can’t tell the difference. You’re exploring a town that seems to love puzzles at every turn and many of the characters you talk to along the way require you to solve some manner of riddle for them to even give up any information on a particular subject.
But the key difference between Layton’s titles and Puzzle Agent 2 is in their design and it isn’t in Telltale’s favour. I can’t tell you how many times the puzzles are repeated, from the countless number patterns to some extremely dull tile rearranging riddles. They just don’t seem to have the same creativity as Layton’s do and the game makes you replay them over and over with little variety in between. Irritating.
This brings us to another problem that the game has with it’s ability to explain to the player the instructions of each puzzle. While many of the puzzle solutions are laughably easy, I struggled on more than one occasion to understand the objective in each problem that you needed to solve, thanks to vague wording and overly complicated diagrams. It’s also annoying that the instructions and the puzzles are on separate pages, meaning you’ll constantly be switching back and forth trying to make sense of the latest catastrophe this game has thrown you into. This is the game’s largest problem: it just isn’t very fun to play!
Visuals/Audio
Puzzle Agent has more of a hit or miss visual style. The whole thing has a pencil drawn aesthetic, where you can see the pencil swipes themselves if you look on the characters. While it does make for a nicely different feel to the game, it seems as if the animation of the characters is all over the place. When I say “animation” by the way, it’s more like a stop motion effect that looks terrible: the characters move by disappearing and reappearing ahead a few footsteps away. You can probably imagine that this really doesn’t look good and thankfully, Telltale have seemed to keep the actual animations to a minimum, which leads to this problem not rearing it’s head too often. Otherwise, the game does look nice and the interesting character designs give the game it’s distinct look.
Audio is also surprisingly well done. Agent Tethers sounds pretty great and many of the other inhabitants of Scoggins sound appropriately strange, weird or creepy. As you’d expect in a game from Telltale, there’s quite a bit of voice acting and it all does a great job at keeping you engaged as you progress throughout the story. The music is also rather simple, but gets the job done and adds to the ambience of the game rather well.
Final Thoughts
When I say Puzzle Agent 2 is a puzzling experience, I mean it literally and figuratively. The story is funny and generally well written with the voice acting and music complimenting the game very nicely. The problem here is that it really isn’t that fun to play and the poor puzzle design was an irritating annoyance, especially when you’ve seen it done so well before in the Professor Layton series. It hinders the game significantly since that’s all it really has to go on and ends up leaving Agent Tethers’ adventure in one strange spot.
Pros
- Generally funny and interesting story
- Good Voice Acting and Music
- Interesting Aesthetic Design
Cons
- Boring and Repetitive Puzzles
- Animations are weak and unexpressive
- Feels like there’s too much filler dialogue
Puzzle Agent 2 is a frustrating experience. The occasionally funny and ridiculous story intrigued me but once you hit the puzzles, you’ll be irritated that the challenge or interesting concepts from something out of Professor Layton title never really presents itself. If your interested in a sillier story experience, then you may get a few hours of enjoyment out of this one. Otherwise, it’s quite hard to justify the $10 price tag.
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