The power of the 3DS and a heartfelt story makes Miracle Mask the best installment in the Professor Layton series.

User Rating: 9 | Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask 3DS
Professor Layton is a long-running beloved franchise with four installments currently on the NIntendo DS. As great as the games were, however, they ran the risk of growing stale. Very little was done from both a presentation and gameplay perspective to advance the series forward. With the introduction of The Miracle Mask, Professor Layton is finally seeing a major leap in progress that was long overdue.

As with most Professor Laytons, the game starts out with a letter sent to the professor by an old friend or acquaintance. This one was sent by one Angela Ledore of Monte d'Or, a place commonly referred to as the City of Miracles. A mysterious man calling himself the Masked Gentleman has been terrorizing the city with a string of events he calls "dark miracles". Upon Layton's arrival to Monte d'Or with apprentice Luke and assistant Emma, they witness one of the Masked Gentleman's dark miracles first hand; a flash of light and then several people suddenly turned to stone statues. Professor Layton, for being as gifted as he is, might find even himself struggling to explain just what is going on in the City of Miracles.

The basic formula of Professor Layton remains the same. You navigate the town by tapping on where you want to go and you tap the scenery to investigate for clues and tap on people to talk to them. Occasionally, they'll give you a puzzle to solve, or you might find a hidden one among the background. These puzzles can either be word problems, logic puzzles, sliding block or tile puzzles, or a number of different types. Puzzle battles have also returned from the fourth installment, which is just a more theatrical display of puzzle solving that involves you and an opponent.

Each puzzle is worth a certain number of points, called Picarats. The more Picarats the puzzle is worth, the harder the difficulty. If you answer incorrectly, the number of Picarats will be reduced. You'll want to gain as many Picarats as you can, because they will unlock extras in the bonus section. To help solve these puzzles, you can collect hint coins, another Professor Layton staple. Thanks to the new presentation of the game, you slide a magnifying glass over where you want to inspect, and the glass will become highlighted when you pass over a hiding coin, which makes them easier to gather.

The greatest feature of Professor Layton actually belongs to part of Layton's back story. The game's split up between the present day and 18 years in the past when the professor was still a student with his best friend Randall, an aspiring archaeologist. One chapter has the two of them exploring an ancient ruins, and the game takes on an entirely new gameplay perspective. Instead of clicking from point to point, you actually have a physical Layton to move about with Randal in tow. Along with digging up traditional puzzles to solve, there will also be mummy and boulder puzzles that you'll need to find the correct paths through. It's such a great change of pace that its only drawback is only appearing once in the game. Maybe future Laytons will make more use of this terrific feature.

As is Professor Layton tradition, there are three mini-games to play with. You collect more stages to play through as you solve puzzles from specific characters. This time around, there's a store display game that has you pairing up related items so that customers buy them all at once. A toy robot game presents you with courses where you have to move the robot past obstacles and make him land on the goal. There's also a pet bunny where you need to train him a la Nintendogs in order to make him perform successfully in a play so he can be taken back into his circus fold.

Solving every stage in a mini-game unlocks a new Layton's Challenge in the bonuses section. These challenges contain much harder variations of puzzles you've solved before in the game. They are a great incentive to look for and solve the mini-game stages in the main game, and they help provide replay value when you've finished the story. There are 135 story puzzles already, so having extra puzzles to play is a sheer delight. Not only that, but the game has daily downloadable puzzles as well, 365 of them, all at no extra charge.

Professor Layton has been given a remarkable face lift thanks the power of the 3DS. The graphics are no longer flat 2D hand drawn environments, but rather multiple layers of drawings with greatly detailed polygonal graphics and characters that change perspective as you move your magnifying glass around. The 3D effect here is also some of the best deployed for any 3DS game giving the characters - which also are animated now - more personality and environments much more depth. There are also several animated graphics that accompany the puzzles that move as you're solving them. It's such a fantastic graphical upgrade from previous games that it's impossible not to fall in love with.

Unfortunately, no revolution has been made in the sound design. That isn't to say the game's audio isn't good, but it's entirely familiar. Sound effects from finding puzzles to hint coins and collectables sound just like they were from the first game. The music, however, is fresh and just as charming and authentic as every installment before it. The real standout feature of the Miracle Mask, as is with every Professor Layton, is the voice acting. The cast once again performs admirably, establishing a great sense of intrigue, danger, charm and even sorrow.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask launched more than a year ago in Japan as it accompanied the launch of the 3DS. Now that it's hit stateside, it's been well worth the wait. Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask will appeal to Layton fans, puzzle fans and owners of 3DSs alike. Not only that, but with its revamped presentation, absolutely amazing story and wealth of post-game puzzles, it stands to be the greatest installment the franchise has seen. It's once again time to put on your thinking cap, this time in glorious 3D!