Random Movie Review - Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva

I think its fair to say that there isn't many video game things happening right now so until there is, I'll try and do my best to give you all something video game related. The reason why some of my Thursday posts in the past few weeks weren't video game related was because some of them were things that some of you really wanted me to have a look at and I will continue to do those things over time. So you all know my history with the Layton games. After I played Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I then played a couple of the Layton games on my 3DS and I have to say, I can't believe I missed out on such a great series (and yes, I will be reviewing the games at some point) and the film is no exception. Now there does seem to be this law that when you have a great video game, they tend to have film makers make bad films out of them which is mostly down to the film makers themselves more than the creators of the video games. But that's not the case here so let's take a look in Layton's very first film:

So after solving a case together in Big Ben in London, Professor Layton (voiced by Christopher Robin Miller) and his young apprentice Luke (voiced by Maria Darling) listen to a record of a song being performed by one of Layton's students. This then prompts them to recall one of their earlier adventures from three years ago in which they go to an opera where Layton's student is performing a play that's centred around the legendary lost land of Ambrosia and the secret of eternal life that its claimed to hold. As the opera comes to a close, a mysterious man then appears and tells everyone that they will play a game where the winner will indeed win the gift of eternal life. So as always, its up to the Professor and his allies to figure out what's going on and put an end to the madness.

The creators of the game, Level-5, said that this stays true to the source material with music, puzzles and characters and in my opinion, while it does heavily use CGI elements, I agree with Level-5. It manages to take the animation used in the games' cutscenes to a whole new level while also adding the elements that make the gameplay what it is, in there as well but not in a playable form. Its one of the best video game films out there that unlike many before it, does it right and I enjoyed it a lot. 9/10