I don’t think I’ve ever felt as though a video game this benign-looking has actively trolled me before.

If you’re wondering whether you should drop $30 on Professor Layton, I should warn you that the question you should really be pondering is, “Do I like shitty magicians and hanging out with old aunts.” Layton is a gorgeous game styled artistically after something between The Triplets of Belleville and a Miyazaki film, which is good, because it so happens this is the attention to design required to package up a 1935 edition of 150 Brain-Teasers For Today’s Inquisitive Youth as an expensive digital geegaw. As the internet has probably already told you, Layton is not a puzzle game, but a walking simulator constantly interrupted by puzzles, set in a town where literally every citizen wants to ask you about their 9- and 5-ounce measuring cups, or their set of tangrams, or whatever. Purchasing Layton involves staring hard at thirty dollars and swearing an oath to it that you consider a bundle of hoary logic puzzles just as important as the gin it was supposed to be traded for.

So, naturally, if you’re anything like me, you already own a copy.

Because guess what: To package up 150 word problems — the problems everyone hated in math class! — you have to give the reacharound to another sector of the brain. Whoever is responsible for Layton — Level 5, it looks like — has done an admirable job of shoving so many collectible items into this game that, at one point, you literally collect an item which helps you collect items. (If it turns out that the guy from the Thousand Arms team responsible for hiding Dating Points all over the place ended up working at Level 5, I wouldn’t be surprised. HEY-O! Anyway.) And that is sort of the great thing about this game: Every stupid “when do the trains meet” puzzle carries with it a sense of dread, not because the game itself demands it, but because you know if you fuck up the answer, you’re going to have to reload the game in order to get full marks, which means you have to sit through a minute and a half of unskippable dross. This knowledge has made me more meticulous in my puzzle consideration than any factor I can imagine being programmed into a cart; knowing that applying my critical thinking skills may save me a reload is an infinitely better impetus to do well than some pretend computer sword.

And, hell, I am really just being a crank here for crank’s sake, because completing little brainteaser puzzles is fun anyway, and it’s hard to be so mad at a game that is so fun even if it’s so transparent. I mean, I would recommend this game to basically anyone that likes to be intellectually challenged for five minutes at a time, and isn’t that really the nicest little backhanded compliment you’ve read all day.

_{and plus I have this baseless notion that if this game sells really well then maybe someone will make a Hotel Dusk 2}