Sorry for being a bad Wii/DS man and not responding in this thread for a while. :D

I think indeed your beef with Layton is very tied to your experience with similar puzzles. For me, there were some that I already knew how to complete, some that I knew roughly what was going on, and a lot that were truly challenging. I think it's managed to find a pretty good middle ground to be honest, and it would probably be pointless to make it more difficult. I'm surprised you find it *easy* though because there are plenty of optional puzzles that I would imagine are tougher.

The DS Advance Wars is indeed rather easy. The GBA ones were quite a bit more difficult from what I hear, to the point where they probably ended up with a Devil May Cry situation where they overcompensated a bit.

___

So the reason I dug up the thread again is that this bit of super awesome news trickled out of EG this morning:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/toribash-be-head...

Now I already knew that they wanted to do a Wii version of Toribash quite a while ago but the plans were vague at best. They still seem vague, but at least mainstream sites are reporting it now so maybe something is abrewin'. I tried the PC demo that barely ran on my computer and I spent absolutely tear inducing amounts of time with it, it's just rediculously addictive. Well at least I think so anyway. Hopefully the video/replay options in the Wii game will be plentiful, as that was the main draw of the PC game with some crazy rendering tools to make awesome clips.

Oh and hey, look what just resurfaced!

http://www.gamekyo.com/videofr14239_ffcc-crystal-b...

Pretty far along too it seems.

Another Code:R - Kioku no Tobira (Wii, Nintendo): 7 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (28/40)

NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

*shuts himself in a dark room and weeps softly*

Man I wanted that game to be brilliant. :(

I... guess. But still, in famitsu there's usually ONE that has something nicer to say about something somwhat nice than all four going for 7s. I won't rule it out just yet though, best wait for western reviews aswell.

But for every nooOooo etc there's a man-sized yes!!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-house-of-the...

House of The Dead: Overkill, 8/10 baby! :D I'm having that!

Lots of offbeat RPGs coming out for the DS indeed. :D


Oh and jesus... nutty... balls of.. delicious chocolate. Muramasa: The Demon Blade has to be like the prettiest thing ever!

Yeah, I didn't like Odin Sphere much either. I think it was a bit too fussy for its own good, I'm hoping for a purer action game with this one with less wonky feeling jumps and what have you.

With EDGE and Eurogamer both giving The House of The Dead: Overkill a - for the genre - staggering 8/10 it's safe to assume it's gonna microwave the hearts of light gun enthusiasts.

To make matters sweeter yet, I just noticed this LE graphic novel pack-in release of the game. Cool stuff. :D

http://www.gamekyo.com/newsfr30160_les-chevaliers-...

Finally! Screenshots of the Broken Sword remake! One fantastic adventure game that.

They are definitely remakes. They've written additional scenarios into them and added a Wii specific interface and additional puzzles.

The first game is brilliant and won't benefit so much from those additions though, but the second game is in dire need of a more fleshed out plot and more clever puzzles.

Oh and they're remaking both, in case I forgot to say.

Yeah, I'm always a little wary of total departures from the formula, but I'm cautiously looking forward to both that and Shining Force Feather.

I wonder where Sands of Destruction (World Destruction in japan) has gone though.