Puzzle Agent

I'm a Telltale fan, I think they have a great business model, buying existing licenses and gaming them; Puzzle Agent and Puzzle Agent 2 seem to be a new IP for them, but still a very good example of their talent. I can't say these are the best games I've ever played, but I got much more enjoyment out of them than I expected.

As member of the FBI Puzzle Research Department you travel to the town of Scoggins, Minnesota to solve a mystery, said investigation involving a series of puzzles. The town is populated with an eclectic group of people involved in a very strange set of circumstances (hard to say much more without spoiling), leading to some very challenging puzzles and quite a bit more genuine humour than I expected. Puzzle Agent 2 is required to get the full story as it's not so much a sequel as it is episode 2, but it does wrap the story up nicely.

Spoiler alert: This is an actual solution to one of the puzzles

I enjoy puzzles in games, but I've actually never really been sold on video games based on puzzles, I find they often lack context that allow full grasp,  a problem this game is rife with. I'd also cite an imbalance in the puzzle difficulty throughout this game, some at the start are harder than some at the end, but that could simply be subjective, due to my skill set, and not technically true.

I got about 10 hours of play out of these two games, which isn't bad; I'd say the story plods along a little bit, due to conversation dialogs, but it is interesting, and, again, funny enough to have kept me going. I'll do an 8/10 on these 2; puzzles tend to the esoteric, and, although the playtime seems a bit short, it's actually about right for this style of game. This gets Robs Stamp of Approval!