puzzle

Jeff and Scott hop on the Molentary Express: Hands-on Professor Layton 2 for the Nintendo DS

Nintendo games: you either like them or hate them. For most of the world, it's like. Among Nintendo's various cutesy-quirky franchises, a recent one--and one of Nintendo's best--happens to be the gorgeously designed puzzle adventure series known as Professor Layton. Although Japan has already seen four installments of the top-hatted man and his chipper little boy companion, English-speaking territories are only up to installment No. 2.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village, which hit the DS in early 2008, was a surprise critical hit and successfully balanced old-fashioned brainteasers with a graphic adventure. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is now in stores, but CNET editors Jeff and Scott got a chance to play over the weekend. Their takes are below.

Scott: Finally, a DS game worth buying! No offense, but it's been a rough couple of months since Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Rhythm Heaven hit in the spring. Nintendo's been very quiet with its own first-party releases, and Professor Layton 2 is one of its first big titles to sink your Nintendo fanboy teeth into. But even if you're not a fan, you might want to consider becoming one.

As in Curious Village, the game opens with beautiful voice-acting and a hand-drawn animation style, a throwback that almost looks like work from Hiyao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli. While it's not exactly clear what the mystery is and why exactly Professor Layton and his boy wonder Luke end up daytripping on a train called the Molentary Express, give the game some patience and enjoy the random (and sometimes forced) puzzles. Soon enough you'll fall into the rhythm and enjoy a pretty excellent hybrid casual/adventure game.

The Professor Layton games make excellent use of the touch screen, both in navigation and puzzle-solving. One hundred fifty new brainteasers are part of the package, and Nintendo promises more available as free downloads like it did with Curious Village. It's a meaty but not epic amount of gameplay, and the 150 puzzles will take some time to figure out. In terms of the number of mysteries of sub-games available in Diabolical Box, it easily meets Curious Village and at times exceeds it.… Read more

Effective French practice

French Verb Games allows users to practice conjugating French verbs. Its intuitive interface and variety of activities make it a great choice for students studying French.

The program's interface is basic, with large graphical buttons for each of the program's functions. Despite the program's name, there's nothing fancy going on here, no sounds or animations or attempts at making verb conjugation particularly fun. In fact, much of the program consists of grids of words and phrases. The program is not necessarily entertaining, but it is an effective way to learn French verbs. A built-in Help file … Read more

Spanish verb help

Amigos Spanish allows users to practice conjugating Spanish verbs. Its intuitive interface and variety of activities make it a great choice for students of Spanish.

The program's interface is basic, with large graphical buttons for each of the program's functions. There's nothing fancy going on here, no sounds or animations or attempts at making verb conjugation fun. In fact, much of the program consists of grids of words and phrases. The program will not entertain you, but it will help you with your verbs. A built-in Help file gives detailed instructions for each of the program's … Read more

Classic puzzler Triazzle comes to the iPhone

Any diehard puzzle fan knows the game Triazzle, which started out in jigsaw form and later landed on PCs.

The goal: Arrange a set of triangular pieces so that the sides of each piece match up with sides of the board and the other pieces. It takes just seconds to learn, but, man, is it a challenge.

Triazzle for iPhone and iPod Touch delivers a beautifully animated, musically rich experience for newcomers and fans alike. It has all the makings of an instant classic.

The game gives you a choice between 9- and 16-piece puzzles and novice, intermediate, and advanced … Read more

More than a matching game

StoneLoops! of Jurassica is a fun and smartly designed arcade puzzle game, a refreshing, prehistoric-themed take on the now-classic rolling-colored-ball-shooter genre. Fans of similar games will immediately recognize the gameplay: you have to shoot colored balls into a winding column of slowly advancing balls, trying to match three or more of the same color in a row to destroy those balls--ideally setting up chain reactions ("chains") of other nearby matches. In StoneLoops, you move left and right while shooting from the bottom of the screen, with several controls to choose from that incorporate tilt, touch, and touch-screen buttons. … Read more

Shift colors to solve the puzzle

Shift Lite is the iPhone version of the popular Web-based Flash game Shift, a traditional, puzzle-based platformer with a twist. In Shift, you traverse a stark black-and-white game world to the beat of a jazzy, noir soundtrack, jumping over obstacles and grabbing keys to activate platforms that let you "escape" into each progressively more complex level. You use touch-screen buttons to run left and right, and you press both buttons to jump.

The twist in Shift involves the black-and-white game world: puzzles on each level often require you to hit the "Shift" button (or you can … Read more

Orange pegs are the key

Peggle is the iPhone and iPod Touch version of the extremely popular (and addictively fun) arcade game also found on Macs, PCs, the Nintendo DS, Xbox Live, and other platforms. Combining skill and luck, this easy-to-play, Pachinko-style game challenges you to shoot down a set number of orange pegs with a limited number of balls on ever more complex levels. You can rotate a scroll wheel or just tap the screen to aim, ideally threading through ubiquitous blue pegs to hit multiple orange pegs with each shot, using carefully planned ricochets. You can double tap the screen to zoom in … Read more

Fill up your screen--with Blowfish!

Blowfish is a free arcade game with cartoony graphics and sound, as well as a simple, silly, and surprisingly engaging schtick. You tap the screen to place and inflate blowfishes (which you can move while you're inflating), and your goal is to fill two-thirds of the fish-tank screen with gently floating--and often cutely expressive--blowfish before the timer runs out.

You have a limited number of fish per level, and each fish is vulnerable to fast-moving, spiky sea urchins while you're inflating it. The inflated fish bounce off each other and the urchins, but you can tilt your iPhone … Read more

Five perfect puzzle games for the iPhone

Puzzle games and the iPhone and iPod Touch go together like peas and carrots (and they're nearly as good for you). They fit beautifully on the small screen, they have no awkward controls to master, and they're ideal when you have 5 minutes or 10 minutes to kill (and don't feel like killing things).

Here's a list of my five favorite puzzle games (so far):

Hanoi A beautiful rendition of the classic Towers of Hanoi game. The object is simple: move a stack of disks from one side of the board to the other. There's … Read more

Adventure classic Myst makes iPhone debut

Everything old is new again. Myst for iPhone and iPod Touch puts one of the best-selling computer games of all time into the palm of your hand. It's in the App Store now for $5.99.

If you're too young to remember Myst (in which case I hate you), it's a first-person graphical adventure that's not unlike dropping into the middle of "Lost." You find yourself on a deserted island (or is it?) filled with mysterious objects, machines, puzzles--maybe even a hatch or two.

The iPhone version looks just like its PC predecessor, from … Read more