The White House's only hope.

Scoggins, Minnesota has a crisis on their hands – the eraser company, the livelihood of most Scoggins residents, has been shut down after a tragic death.  After a call from the White House (apparently, their erasers are very important to them) it’s up to FBI’s Nelson Tethers from the Department of Puzzle Research to figure out what happened.  Nelson is a bit awkward – it seems he doesn’t get out of his office often and has a quirky penchant for gum.  Still, armed with his trusty tape recorder, he sets off.  Can he make his way through missing gnomes and broken fireplaces to find out what happened?  Play Telltale Game’s newest release, Puzzle Agent, to find out!

Scoggins seems like a nice enough town but there’s no doubting that most of the residents are slightly off.  The whole feel of the game is slightly chilling and it has nothing to do with the mounds of snow.  Of course, when the enemy seems to be some mysterious gnomes, it’s hard to be on edge.  Nevertheless, with closed-lipped inhabitants, Nelson definitely has his work cut out for him.

I oddly enjoyed the simplicity of the artwork in this game.  It’s not as crisp or involved as other Telltale releases like the Sam and Max series or Wallace and Gromit.  Like a crudely drawn cartoon, its pencil-and-crayon-drawn style adds a charm to it that I haven’t seen yet.  Telltale is fairly predictable in their gameplay:  colorful characters, hilarious snark and ridiculous puzzles.  Always entertaining, but predictable.  Puzzle Agent is still that point-and-click style, but is much more reminiscent of DS’s Professor Layton puzzle-wise.  Like Professor Layton, it’s an interesting mix – some puzzles are so obvious that it takes only seconds to figure out.  The next one, though, will likely force you to walk away from the game and come back later – or in my case, three times.  Luckily, you can collect chewed gum pieces from just about anywhere in the game, gaining hints along the way.

The puzzles were pretty hit-and-miss.  They return to the same style more than once and it’s not all that challenging.  If this game stretches out into a series, I hope they give us a bit more to work with.  Something I enjoyed about this that you don’t get with some other Telltale games is that you don’t have to wait for the computer to have a conversation.  Everything people say pops up in little speech bubbles, and if you’re done listening to the prattling, feel free to left-click on the mouse to move on.  This is especially helpful when you’ve already heard the conversation once.

At $9.95, I would say it’s a fair price to pay for a few hours of fun.  I enjoyed this enough that I hope they follow up with more episodes, although hopefully a little more put together – and give us some challenges with those puzzles, Telltale – we can handle it!

ComicsOnline gives Puzzle Agent 3.5 out of 5 creepy red gnomes.

Wanna play the game yourself?  Head over to Puzzle Agent’s website to purchase it for PC download!

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