Puzzle Agent 2
Score: 88% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Telltale Games Developer: Telltale Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle/ Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Puzzle Agent 2 returns us to not only Special Agent Tethers, but also the small community of Scoggins to try and further understand the odd community explored in the first game. This game keeps with the interesting and unique art style that was set in Puzzle Agent. To be more specific, everything feels like it is roughly hand-drawn and casually colored-in. To add to the style, the heavy dark strokes that outline everything appear to have been stroked on a paper that bleeds the ink a bit, so there aren't any real solid lines in the game. It's a look that took me some time to get used to in the first game, and feels just right for our return to Agent Tethers' world. Sound does the trick as well. Returning characters keep the same voices and while most of the characters have that Fargo-esque accent, that seems a bit over-the-top, it fits with the previous game's feel. Granted, I am from the Deep South and while I've done my share of traveling and met a lot of people, I haven't really talked to many folks with this particular accent. It sounds like I would expect, but it could be exaggerated a bit to make the citizens of Scoggins even more stand-offish.
Gameplay: Puzzle Agent 2 starts off soon after Agent Tethers of the FBI's Puzzle Division has closed the case he was sent to deal with in the quite woodsy Northern town. With the eraser factory back up and running and once again supplying the White House with erasers, Tethers can return to his job in the FBI basement waiting for yet another strange puzzle-related case. There's just one thing that's bothering him, and that's the fact that the factory's foreman is still missing. Oh, and the fact that Tethers saw him abducted by little red-skinned gnomes that the inhabitants of Scoggins refer to as "The Hidden People." Taking a much-needed vacation, Tethers returns to Scoggins on his own time and tries to see if he can trace down the missing person. Like the first game, the story is used to direct Tethers to one puzzle after another. Each one seems like it would fit nicely into a brain teaser book and, with the possible exception of some that require actual moving pieces, most likely did. This time, Tether's series of puzzles lead him to some new locations in Scoggins and he learns that there are actually a lot of people that go missing from the sleepy little town all the time. While a lot of his puzzles are there merely to help some character work out a little problem they might be having, there are quite a few that are there that will lead him closer and closer to the fate of the missing persons.
Difficulty: Puzzle Agent 2 has a wide variety of puzzles to throw at you. There is everything from figuring out the next numbers in a sequence to logical word games that give you a set of rules like "X doesn't like to by near Y" and "B comes before X" where you are supposed to arrange objects to satisfy the rules. There is also a healthy selection of putting pictures in sequences, moving tiles around to open a path across a map and even a few math-based puzzles thrown in for good measure. As for the overall difficulty of these puzzles, I found I could solve a vast majority of these puzzles with no hints and only a single submission attempt. There were a few that took several tries and others that required a hint, but they were few and far between. I have to say though, I don't know how fair my judging of the game's puzzles is, since I've stuck my nose in many a brain teaser book over the years and there were quite a few puzzles presented in Puzzle Agent 2 that I had seen in some variation before.
Game Mechanics: Puzzle Agent 2 is all point and click. Tapping anywhere on the screen will send out a small sonar blip that will show items of interest in the vicinity and activating one of those points is just a click away. While I typically don't like simply showing the player what areas they might want to click on, feeling that it takes away from the classic-adventure feel, I find this sonar ping technique to be a nice middle ground. Sure, a player can simply tap in a few locations on the screen to get full coverage of the area and see what they can do, but its a far cry from already having those on the screen and requiring no effort or logical leaps at all to find what you need to click on. That being said, I find this even more forgiving in the case of Puzzle Agent 2 since it isn't your traditional adventure title. Sure you are going around and talking to people, but there is no inventory, and no real branching dialogue trees. In fact, all of the puzzles are just puzzles; nothing really tries to cleverly hide that fact like most adventure games do. This game, like the last, is all about brain teasers. If you are the type that likes a variety of puzzles, then nabbing the Puzzle Agent games is a good move. While you don't need to have played the first one in order to jump into Puzzle Agent 2, you will only have a short recap segment explaining your previous trip to Scoggins to explain what happened. It really is best to have played through the first game, if for nothing else, then to have a good handle of the characters.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP / Vista, 2.0 GHz Processor, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 8.1 Sound Device, 64 MB DirectX 8.1-Compliant Video Card, DirectX 9.0c or Better   Test System: Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
Related Links: Puzzle Agent 2 Official Home Page Game Vortex’s Puzzle Agent Coverage
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