Puzzle Agent 2 Review Thread

[puzzlebox]

So we finally return to the crazy creepy town of Scoggins for a second helping of nuts!

What did you think of Puzzle Agent 2?

[IsaacDavner]

I will tell all when the game actually comes out. :P

But seriously, I hope the gnomes are still creepy a second time around and the mystery of Scoggins is solved in a satisfactory way.

[spree2k]

This review is primarily from the iOS version of the game.

Let me just say that I discovered Puzzle Agent 1 about a week and a half ago. I went on an iPhone gaming shopping spree to say the least, and Puzzle Agent 1 was one of the games I picked up. It was one of the last games that I tried out, but it turned out to be the best experience out of all of my new games. I was thrilled by the story of Puzzle Agent 1, and when I discovered I was just in time for the sequel, it was rather pleasing news. So I put the date on my calendar, and grabbed Puzzle Agent 2 at 10 PM CST last night.

I realized I'd have to upgrade to iOS 4.2 to play the game, so it took me a while to restore my phone after I bought the game. I chose to start playing the game late last night even though it was well past time for me to go to sleep. Let me just say that the game does not disappoint.

Of course, there are the issues on iPhone with the "sound skipping" problems. Audio dialogue will skip in and out, but honestly, I was not really bothered at all by it. The story from the first game had me so captivated to try and complete the game as fast as possible that it truly did not matter to me that the game had faults. The only other problem I encountered was the fact that the game's touch controls were sometimes unresponsive, but maybe it's just me. Either way, in a game that operates in the manner that Puzzle Agent does, I don't think it matters.

If you liked the puzzles from the first game, you will be right at home with this new installment of the game. In fact, I found the puzzles more rewarding, as I was a little more familiar with the way the Puzzle Agent series operated this time around. Instead of randomly guessing what I had to do, this time it felt like I was a little more prepared for what I had to do to advance through a puzzle. Overall, the puzzles do not stray away from the first game's ingenuity.

The story picks off about 2 months after the first game, I think. Don't quote me on that, but it was late night, and the whispers may have altered my intelligence. Although, I'm pretty sure I heard that right. I challenge you to play this game in halves. This game is a little longer than the first game, and my first playthrough was about 5 to 7 hours in length. The reason I make that challenge is that the story rewards you if you play to a certain point and then shut the game off. Just think about what has happened so far in the game. If you're a mystery fan, that may become natural for you to do such a thing. About halfway through the game, I finally went to bed, and just started to ponder about what I thought was going to happen.

It turns out every theory I had was wrong, and the ending of the game did not disappoint for me. In a game where the little things are worthy of being paid attention to, I believe the ending wrapped up everything together in a way that would be satisfying to the fans of the game. The dark comedy is still there. The puzzles are clever. Everything is there that makes this game what it is: a well-told story with a great formula of presentation. The bugs are there, but in time, they will hopefully be fixed for those who are waiting. Overall, I loved it, and $4.99 is a perfect price for what I believe to be one of the better games on the iOS.

Puzzle Agent 1 & 2: 5 out of 5 stars.

[Irishmile]

Im not sure if you know this IsaccDavner but Nelson has been looking for you.

[Melchon]

So, when will Nelson start his "vacation" in the bermuda triangle? (aka when do we get puzzle agent 3)

Some nice puzzles, missing a "bugs in boxes" or similar though. Very bug free, except for some minor graphic errors (black boxes instead of parts of the screen) at the end of the game.

The action puzzle at the end was nice, but may be a bit fast for some people.

[Irishmile]

Great game I really hope there is a third... the ending really suggested a new local as much as I like Scoggins it would be cool to see Nelson someplace else... as long as the Hidden People are along.

[Soultaker]

I was pretty disappointed by this game, to be honest. It was too short, too easy, and it borrowed too much from the first episode: locations, characters, plot elements. You'll be renting a room in the inn again, quizzing the unhelpful sheriff in the diner again, talking to the brotherhood in the lodge again, et cetera. Even some of the puzzle ideas are similar to the first game.

There also seemed to be a little less variation in puzzles, and less lateral thinking (à la the textual riddles, or the room key puzzle, from the first game). A few puzzles still suffer from poor explanation (the rock-throwing puzzle) or implementation (the batteries puzzle), although this wasn't a huge problem.

The first episode seemed to be an experiment, which led me to expect some significant improvements in the second one. I was disappointed to see this was not the case, despite many people offering good constructive criticism after the first game. Maybe I was expecting too much...

[chalon]

It took me about ~4 hours to beat, which is about how long the first game took. I felt like they did a better job explaining the puzzles in this game compared to the first one, but that may have contributed to a slightly easier difficulty.

I would have liked a bit less recycled art content, but it's understandable given it takes place in the same town from the first one. At least they (sort of) resolved what was happening on the town.

Overall I did enjoy it, though it wasn't earth-shattering or anything. I'll post a more detailed review tomorrow...

EDIT: Full review: http://www.gamecanary.com/2011/07/re...uzzle-agent-2/

[Tjibbbe]

I'm not reading any other posts because I'm still playing it and I don't want to run into spoilers, so this may have been mentioned before. I'm really enjoying the story so far, but the Coin Box-puzzle seemed a bit unfair to me. I know this game is made by Americans and that the game takes place in America, but not all non-Americans know the value of the various American coins just by their size. I suspect you guys couldn't do the same for Euro-coins. It's almost (but not quite) like the Monkey Island 2 monkey wrench-thing. (I was also stumped by the digits in space-puzzle, and after using up all my hints and getting the wrong answer 5 times in a row I decided to just google the numbers. I never would have guessed that in a million years, but at least the solution doesn't require the player to be American to get the right answer).


Still a great game, just a minor complaint. Really looking forward to playing it more after work! Favorite thing so far: the extra stamps after completing a puzzle. I like the sound those things make. All the other puzzles have been enjoyable for me so far too.

[tbm1986]

Started playing last night at about 3am, earphones in and only the monitor for light. Played for 2 hours until I got to the 2nd visit to the hot girl's house, just after Nelson freaked out in the forest and found the astronaut suit. I love the atmosphere. They got the iceiness and feeling of foreboding just right. I was excited but quaking in my boots. Will finish it once it's dark here. Good work so far, Teltale!

[taumel]

For a TT production a surprising experience, the installation process worked and there were no cumbersome glitches this time. +1

I only played through the first five puzzles so far and the story as expected isn't exciting, i also found the way the characters talk kind of odd, B-Movie overacting, ... but hey i did expect great puzzles and so far they aren't around:

1) Boring, could have been done way more interesting.
2) Not well defined, there a many valid alternative solutions. Try and error until you find out which route the designer thought of.
3) Nice idea but way too easy.
4) Nice idea again but way too easy again.
5) I tried to enter a name and *boom* the puzzle ended, no idea what happened.

I hope that the riddles will get more challenging, otherwise this will be another dissapointing TT production.

[SetsukiFR]

Just finished it, still have to solve the 2 bonus puzzles.
I won't say that I was disappointed. Puzzle Agent 2 can't be as surprising as the first one.
I felt that weird feeling the first one gave me, feeling that even though I don't understand, I have to go deeper...
Still, at the end, it was maybe too much...

Why, when, has Nelson gone mad ?
What about the hidden people ?
Why are there missing people, who killed/kidnapped them ?
Who is the other astronaut ? He doesn't seem lunatic to me...

There are many questions left unanswered, I might find some answers by thinking about it, but I was hoping to understand the first puzzle agent by playing the second one...

The puzzles were good, some were hard and others weren't... I was only frustrated by the puzzle with the coins, which answer is binary... I don't use pennies, dimes or cents, so even though I understood that
01 10 11 -> 100
I had to click randomly on the coins I couldn't recognize because I don't use them.

Anyway, despite those little problem, it's nice to meet so many new interesting people !

[henke37]

Yeah, the coins where unfair. I had no chance there.

And I didn't get the instructions for the rock throwing.

Finally, I had technical issues with images being replaced with black boxes. The final puzzle became impossible to solve without a restart this way.

As for the story, there was a lot of threads that was forgotten about. For example, it is never explored what Nelson did when he was mad. It is strongly implied that he beat up his own boss. Yet he was the one that didn't get promoted to Siberia? And the hallucinations in the first game was never explained either. There is also the issue of the other missing people, what happened to them? There is also the ending, how come the agents didn't stop Nelson, they where just standing there!

And the uncompletable puzzles just didn't have the same effect as in the previous game. While I admit that the sparks puzzle had a nice interruption, the other ones just felt like he was giving up on them.

And the story felt awfully linear. I don't mind linear stories, but it's the feeling that you got was the issue here. It was pretty much always "go there". And if you talked to someone afterwards it was pretty much "go there".

The controls in the dragging puzzles didn't work well. And why couldn't I move the potted plants?

And the maze is clearly not A*. Following walls is lame.

And the robot puzzles need to have a quicker termination. End the run when the robot gets killed, when the robot meets the girl or when the entered program ends, not always when the input field ends. In addition, it was awkward editing the already input program. There was no way of inserting a new token in the middle of the string.

[Cheeseness]

My girlfriend and I just finished our first play through. It was fun, and the final ice breaker was a great surprise.

Originally Posted by SetsukiFR

I had to click randomly on the coins I couldn't recognize because I don't use them.!

This was our experience too.

My girlfriend and I are divided on the Pi puzzle. My girlfriend thinks that Pi puzzle is really only accessible to those who already know of the sequence, but I like to think that with enough time and thinking, the correct sequence could be derived (by comparison, the coin puzzle mentioned above is culturally specific, and no amount of futzing around is going to reveal what you guys nickname your coin denominations).

Unanswered questions are fine, but Darrel's disappearance seems a bit gratuitous since it was introduced as what seemed to be a relevant plot element that was never resolved (unless we missed something big).

We give it 3.5 crosswords out of 5 (pretty good and well worth the purchase ^_^ ).

[richmcd]

Very disappointing.

I don't understand how there are four people listed in the credits for puzzle design. There are barely more than 30. And like in the first game, the puzzles are a completely unmemorable mish-mash (often poorly explained) that could easily have been cobbled together (the design, not the implementation) in an afternoon. I get the feeling that the designers might think that because they have no trouble solving puzzles like the ones in the Layton series, it ought to be no sweat making some of their own. But that's not the case. There's a skill to making simple puzzles and brainteasers. Without that skill, they've ended up producing another assortment of cribbed and recycled ideas, which are all back-of-the-cereal box easy. Not fun.

Full marks for atmosphere and graphics, but I get the impression that that was their main consideration at the expense of everything else. The writing was ho-hum, and the pacing of the story was dreadful: I don't mind surreal stories, but if you're going to have a thriller (style) plot that deliberately makes no sense, the one thing you can't do is navel-gaze. After almost every scene Nelson recaps the scene we just saw into his tape-recorder. This would be fine if he had some new insight to offer, but he just recaps the action, meaning that we basically have to endure each plot point twice in quick succession. This would make sense in a much longer game, when you might expect the players to take breaks, play in many sessions, and require reminders about what they might have forgotten; but I just played through in one sitting of about two and a half hours, so it was tedious. I don't understand how the previous reviewer managed to stretch the experience out to 5 - 7 hours. I didn't skip any dialogue and missed only one puzzle.

Everything in the gameplay works against enjoying the story. Because it's so linear, and the conclusions Nelson draws are so dubious (because he's going mad, I know, but I'm not, so there's a disconnect there) there's no sense that it feels like we're investigating anything. And a lot of the puzzles were very tenuously linked with the plot. (I don't mind that per se, but if the puzzle isn't integrated with the story then it should be good. I'm happy to accept poor puzzles that are well-integrated, or great puzzles that are shoehorned in, but here we've got the worst of both worlds.) Pretty much all the interactivity feels like a chore to be endured to get to trigger the next cutscene. If you'd rather the game was a video then something's gone drastically wrong. And I don't think this is just an unavoidable feature of the genre: the Professor Layton games are amongst my favourite.

It's a real shame, because a well-executed version of this would be basically my dream game.

[Soultaker]

Originally Posted by Cheeseness

My girlfriend thinks that Pi puzzle is really only accessible to those who already know of the sequence

I agree with her (even though this was the only sequence puzzle I was actually able to solve without any hints!)

Originally Posted by richmcd

After almost every scene Nelson recaps the scene we just saw into his tape-recorder. This would be fine if he had some new insight to offer, but he just recaps the action, meaning that we basically have to endure each plot point twice in quick succession.

But it did make for a pretty good joke involving an anthropologist!

(Otherwise, I agree with you.)

[puzzlebox]

I had the same issue others have mentioned with the coin puzzle. One of the coins had "quarter dollar" written on it if you looked close enough, and I knew which were dimes and pennies from the ones already placed in the boxes, but was left to guess that the big yellow coin was a dollar. Tough one to localise, that.

[StrongBrush1]

Let me break it down:

Puzzles: Mainly were a bit easier to figure out this time, but some of them were confusing at first. Some were poorly explained, or else very confusing.

Plot: Very incredible. The Creepy atmosphere complimented the story extremely well, and the characters were well-developed and interesting, although there are still a few loose ends I'm hoping to have tied up soon:

*Where are all of the other people who disappeared?
*What happened to Steve and Bjorn?

Also, can we find out some more about Jim, please?

Overall: A solid game that is engaging and entertaining from beginning to end.

Just one more question, though. Will we get a Puzzle Agent 3? And if so, will it be in Scoggins or Bermuda?

[Astovidatu]

I am really surprised some ppl are too lazy to just google the coin names.
Took me 10 seconds to find out.

My personal review: Great game, still too easy puzzles. Make 'em harder please.

[SetsukiFR]

Originally Posted by Astovidatu

I am really surprised some ppl are too lazy to just google the coin names.
Took me 10 seconds to find out.

I just never use anything else than a pen, a piece of paper, and sometimes a calculator to solve puzzles or any point & click.
I (personally, no offense intended) call that cheating, and don't feel good haveing to quit a game to play it.