TheJoseph

Curious Village is great if you just want some challenging puzzles, but if your looking for anything else your likely not to find it here. It's hard to be critical **** when it's key gameplay aspect is done well, but CV really suffers from being bland. To see what I mean, let's look at the story and characters. The story line is that our two heroes are brought to a strange town to work out some property rights or something on the surface, but are really interested in finding out the secret of the golden apple, a super cool treasure, or something. When they get to the town someone dies and now the plot is a murder mystery, or at least it is once you solve the pressing issue of some important persons cat running off. If you can't tell, I find the story to be pretty forgettable and overall uninteresting. While this may be fine for most games, CV spends a good amount of time focusing on the story considering it has a visual novel-esque format. This causes a good chunk of the game besides a very small amount of the end to be superbly forgettable. There are some twists at the end that I can't say I saw coming, but were just... stupid. This is something that's in almost all the Layton games, unfortunately, but when the overall plot is so boring it just makes it stand out more as bland and dumb. Next we have the characters. First off, I'll say Layton and Luke are cool. I like them as protags, their fun characters, they're good. Everyone else... about as bland as the story. CV really suffers from going for quantity over quality with it's cast. There's a whole bunch of people with personalities that can be boiled down to "this person does X". This wouldn't be too bad if the game had some characters other than the protags who were more than this but there just aren't. Design wise, again Layton and Luke are good but I just don't find anyone else's design memorable at all. They're just that look cartoony and that's it. So yeah, this isn't really a strong suit for CV as well. The graphics overall do have some nice aspects to them, the hand-drawn style works very well and the art on the top screen looks very nice. My biggest problem graphically is the sprites in this game just look ugly. Very inexpressive and really basic. I think this is also a problem that boils down to quantity over quality. So yeah, good style, but not utilized that well. The town you're in also gets kinda old. You're there the entire game and it loses it's charm pretty quickly and just becomes really boring. The music in this game is great. The instruments used work well, all the songs fit when they play, and it just sounds lovely. Another highlight are the sound effects, from the text bleeps to walking down an echoing hallway, these are some of the best sound effects on the DS I've heard. The audio design of CV is plain and simply great. Gameplay-wise, it's almost all good. To start with the negatives, moving around on the map is pretty time consuming and finding your next location can feel like wondering around until you find the thing. My only other problems is that the puzzles go from 0 to 100 WAY too quick. You'll be going from baby's first puzzle to rage-inducing puzzles really quickly and it can be pretty jarring. Other than that, all the puzzles are good. They are a fun time, and almost always have a clever concept and solvable answer. While I wish I had more of a reason to be doing said puzzles, that's really just a personal preference and they are very good. So yeah, if you want to play this game for some really good puzzles and some nice music to go with it, this is the game for you. If you're looking for anything more than this, CV might be better to skip.

Uncharted 2 is the perfect example a sequel improving upon an original game in every way. That is no exaggeration this game does every single possible thing better than Uncharted 1. The story and characters are really good. The plot is pretty similar to 1 but is paced and told in a way more interesting way. The characters are all great too. Chloe, Elena, Tenzen, and Drake being the main standouts but the villains are also really cool too. The gameplay is really fun with the gun fights feeling way more fun this time around and the combat benefitting from the added stealth elements. Climbing is fun like always The music is basically as good if not a little better than 1, with Drake's theme overall being quite an improvement. The performances are all top of the line which should really be expected from anything Naughty Dog at this point. Graphically the games look really good. The PS4 version definitely makes the game hold up to today's standards even if it doesn't compare to games like 4. The set pieces are really good too, while not as good as 3s they manage to be better than 1 and 4s. If your like me and saw a lot of potential in Uncharted 1 but don't think it was fully realized you will be very satisfied with this game.

Uncharted 3 is a great, great game. It had to live up to the standard Uncharted 2 put absurdly high but it somehow manages to surpass it. To be fair it only passed it by the slimmest of margins and definitely wasn't as innovative as Uncharted 2 was but it was still better overall. The story and characters are about what you'd expect but are still pretty good. The story is pretty easily the best of the trilogy feeling just a bit more personal than 2s thanks to seeing young Nate. The characters are equal to 2, better than 1, and weaker than 4. While no one will ever beat Tenzen, Cutter was a good addition and the villains felt like they had more of a presence than 1 and 2s. Not enough Chloe tho :/ The gameplay is about as good as 2 with the only improvements being better combat and the gun fights felt a little more fun and challenging than before. Tho 4 is still better in this category as well. The music is great like all the games, the performances are top tier like all the other games too. 3 for sure has the best theme for Drake too. Can't say much about the graphics as a played the PS4 trilogy but from what I've seen it looks pretty good for a PS3 game. This game holds the title for best set pieces. Only thing it beats Uncharted 4 in imo Overall this is definitely my favorite of the trilogy, even tho it just barely beats 2. If you've played the first two you're really doing yourself a disservice by not playing it.

I really don't have a whole lot to add to this game. It's pretty much the ultimate experience Uncharted could possibly give you. Easily the best story and characters in the series. While it's still the same plot structure as 1-3 the plot feels way more gripping and you get even more attached to the characters than you already were. Unbelievably good looking graphics. Even if you're not a fan of the realistic graphics style you can't deny this game looks awesome. (Go away Jiffy) Best gameplay we've seen in the series. It won't convince people who don't like the style to warm up to it but if you liked 1-3 this is gonna be a wild ride. The music is as good as you'd expect, really good even if it's not the most memorable. The performances are also what you'd expect, which is some of the best performing there is in video games. Overall if you have a PS4 and your interested in the Uncharted style this is a most play once you've played the Nathan Drake Trilogy.

Bad Story? Check Bad controls? Check. bad gameplay? Check. Completely uninteresting opening? Check. This was a pretty disappointing playthrough, I wanted to play some other VNs but nothing about the storyline was gripping and once I got to the gameplay portion it was just bland, uninteresting and didn't make sense. Really my only positive is that the graphics looked pretty good, so it's clear some sort of effort was put into this by some people.

Pros: - Amazing Story - Great gameplay - Good bad graphics (this makes sense if you played this) - Complexity - Ability to blow your mind - Lovable and hatable characters - Epic plot twists - Has funny, sad, confusing, mysterious, scary, and shocking moments Cons: Has a few weird character animations - Annoying map that you can't skip - Could've explained To Be Continued moments better - Spelled DUNNO ... DONNO (Yeah, I ran out of bad things about the game :/)

Pros: - Amazing Story - Great Gameplay - Good Bad Graphics (this makes sense if you played it) - Complexity - Ability to blow your mind - Lovable and hatable characters - Has funny, sad, confusing, mysterious, scary, shocking moments Cons: - 3ds version has a game breaking glitch DON'T SAVE IN THE ESCAPE ROOMS - Has a few weird character animations - Annoying map you can't skip - Could've explained To Be Continued Better - Spelled "DUNNO" "DONNO" (Yeah, I ran out of things bad about this game

This game starts off as a simple "try to escape this place and find out who the evil captor is", but it gets very complicated, very fast. You play as a guy in college named Junpei. Once you get to the ship you're being held on you must attempt to escape by finding the number nine door and going through what follows it alive. I won't go into much more detail then that because the story is something you must experience yourself. 999 can be split into four parts, which will tell you if this game is for you or not 1. Story- The story is the main part of the game and is shown by dialogue and your characters thoughts, there is no voice acting so if hate reading, this won't be for you. If you like or at the very least don't mind reading, you'll love this. 2. Gameplay/puzzle solving- The puzzle solving is the very large majority of gameplay in this game. The puzzle style is escape the room, it is really challenging but takes a back-seat to the story which you will want to get to while playing the puzzle's. 3. Choices- The smallest part of the game, but also the most important. The choices you make will decide whether you get one of two bad endings, a very bloody and confusing ending, a sad ending, a fake ending, and the true end. All of these endings will lead to what is the final part of this game... 4. Mindf*cks- Yup, the game will be very complicated, many plot twists, and some things you really got to think about. Just because the game gets confusing, doesn't mean that the logic is flat out wrong, or starts to contradicting itself. Everything has a reason for happening, and nothing should be left not noted. In the end this is a wonderful, solid 9.6 game that's only beaten by its sequel (ps vita version to be specific.) You are doing a disservice to yourself not playing it, so go on amazon and buy it!