DS is it!!

Most of my gaming time lately has been wrapped up in the latest Professor Layton adventure to be released stateside, the Diabolical Box. I fell in love with and devoured the first game, the Curious Village, because it was perfect for portable gaming. Easy to drop in and run through a few puzzles, or collect some hint coins, while standing in line at the grocery store. Diabolical Box takes the excellent formula from the first game, and makes it even better with a whole slew of quirky new characters and mind bending puzzles. Add in an interesting and innovative story, highlighted by superbly animated cut scenes and video, and I'm in gaming Heaven!

The puzzles range from the mundane to the complex, with many classics and many that are just plain tricky sprinkled about. Additionally, there are three mini-games that you can jump into whenever you like, new weekly downloadable puzzles from Level-5, and unlockable puzzles from completing mini goals during the storyline. The story itself has 138 puzzles, with an additional 18 unlockable for completing these goals, and (to count today) four weekly puzzles. On top of all this, the games interact with each other via passwords that unlock more puzzles and concept art.

Now I eagerly anticipate the next game in the series (according to Wikipedia there have been four and a half games released in Japan already) to be released here in the US so I can get my puzzle on again. In the meantime, I'm hunting down the soundtrack, as I love the music that is liberally sprinkled throughout the series.

Also, prompted by Stargrace's excited Twitterings, I picked up Scribblenauts yesterday and have been tearing through that ever since. I spent a good hour last night playing around on the log in screen, combining different tools and a variety of prehistoric monsters to see what kinds of trouble I could get in to.

Lots of good portable gaming to keep myself occupied on my commute for a while. Too bad I drive.... Time to look at getting back on the train!