Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent

Nelson Tethers Is a man from an '80s cartoon strip. He's not so much animated, as dynamically illustrated, with a typical movement involving two frames. As a puzzle agent, he occupies the FBI's least prestigious role, and you'll find him to be a charisma-free zone.

The game starts off irrationally enough, while he was having a dream about a spaceman Tether wrote the word 'Scoggie' on a scrap of paper.

So, when he discovers that there's an eraser shortage in the FBI building, he hops onto his snowmobile and heads straight to the town whose name he wrote down in his dream. Yeah, the one he had before he found out about the eraser shortage. You'll be glad to hear that the logic of the puzzles is more coherent. And for the price, you get a decent puzzle-to-pence ratio. Even more reassuringly we don't run through the usual gamut of classic puzzles. It's a relief not to have to be subjected to the Tower of Hanoi, yet again. Instead, you'll get a few clever jigsaws, codes and thoughtful logic puzzles that are generally pitched between easy and satisfyingly tricky. The marking system is cute, with every solution filed costing the taxpayer upwards of $75,000. Cuts clearly aren't hitting the puzzle-solving bureaucrats.

But, I'll come clean, I'm a DS Professor Layton fan, so I was hoping for a similarly paced adventure. But in a number of ways the game annoys. There are too many conversations, which wouldn't be a bad thing if you could speed them up to reading pace. But the text is too slow and the voice acting is slower. Unless you develop a boner for the game's dry wit, you'll be clicking your way tfirouqh the talking, in the end skipping them completely.

Broken Humour

The humour isn't just broken by poor timing and passionless delivery, it's not clear whether Tethers wants to be funny or not. Take Mike Lobb. He's referred to as The Lobster. But when one character says, "He got bitten by the lobster", you think, "hang on, lobsters don't bite". And Mike didn't bite anyone, it was an argument. I refuse to believe I'm the only one who can be angered by poorly functioning jokes.

Buy Nelson Tethers for the puzzles. It's not much money, and you can skip the talking without worrying about the plot. You might find the chat endearing. After all, some people like having their balls nailed to wood.