Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent

MetalGearAl · 12-08-2010, 12:50

Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent

Telltale have launched a new game as part of their pilot project, where they'll be making the first potential game in a series and seeing how it fares.

Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is pretty much a carbon-copy of the Professor Layton games for the DS. It plays exactly the same - i.e. a linear investigation adventure game where every Tom, Dick and Harry wants you to solve a puzzle for them.

I've just finished it it, it's not too long, but it's worth playing. Good and bad points:

Good

- The comic-book style looks nice and clean
- The story is quite fun and then gets quite dark
- It's got some genuinely jumpy moments. A couple which even interact with the puzzles you're doing at the time, which breaks up the monotony a bit!

Bad

- The art style is good but they could do with upping the framerate so it looks a bit better when characters are moving.
- It's very linear. Basically there are no real choices you can make in this game.
- Puzzles on the whole are very easy. The only ones that aren't are simply because of bad wording on their part. One puzzle I had to reread about 3 or 4 times and I still didn't understand what it was asking of me.
- There are a couple of bugs in the UI (no Quit button on the menu?)

I think if they improved the puzzles and added a bit more adventuring into it, it'd be a good series. Even Prof Layton makes you look around and find where you should go next, this forces you along a set path. I loved the way that a couple of the puzzles get interupted as part of the story though, making it more interesting.

Hopefully if gets picked up to make another, they'll put a bit more effort / money into it.

Anyone else given it ago? There's a demo available on the Telltale site

Trailer from E3:

LeftHandedGuitarist · 08-09-2010, 08:43

I've just started playing this after it's become available in Telltale's Great Adventure Pack 2010. First impressions, very good. While I agree with you that the animation frame rate is annoyingly low, the drawing style and voice work is really funny and has drawn me right in (every line that the Sheriff says has me giggling).

Unfortunately I'm crap at most of these kinds of puzzles!

MetalGearAl · 08-09-2010, 09:54

Glad someone else is giving it a go

See if there are any parts that make you jump, I know of two parts where I did!

Deano · 08-09-2010, 17:09

Happened to me too! I really liked this but did get annoyed at losing points on some puzzles just because the game didn't explain them properly.

LeftHandedGuitarist · 01-07-2011, 09:05

Puzzle Agent 2 released today.

MetalGearAl · 01-07-2011, 09:58

Oh sweet! I would have preferred a whole new setting but nevermind. Hoping they've tweaked it a bit to fix a few of the bad points I mentioned above, but even with those the first game was very enjoyable.

Jedibitch · 01-07-2011, 10:26

Just got this in my telltail adventure pack bargain on Steam, looks great!