For those who have no idea what Scribblenauts is, the game has generated the most amount of hype I’ve heard this year among older DS gamers. The game revolves around hundreds of puzzles, where you are tasked with collecting a star from each level. The levels are broken up into two types: Puzzle and Adventure. In the Puzzle mode, you are placed into a stage with requirements to fulfill, such as helping a boy break a pinata, getting a cat off a roof, etc. By meeting the conditions, you are awarded a star for the level. In the Adventure mode, the star is visible on the level, but it’s tucked away in a very inconvenient to reach place so you need to decide how to physically retrieve it.
My critical eye for games generally leads me to ask, “Does this game bring new things to the table?” The second question, regardless of the answer to the first, is “Is this game polished and implemented well?” The brunt of what constitutes a good game for me always lies in the second question, but generally the first question has to be fulfilled for a game to even be considered a game of the year for me.
Scribblenauts answers my first question marvelously. The innovative feature of playing through both the Puzzle and Adventure modes is that you can write practically anything you can think of (within reason) and it will appear on screen for you to use. Get a cat off the roof? I tried various methods and they all worked, such as creating milk to attract the cat down, or creating a dog and placing it on the roof to scare the cat down. You really are limited by your imagination. Each level has a par like golf, encouraging you to create as few things as possible to get a higher score on the level. I laughed out loud when I was stuck on a level where I had to get up a steep cliff and there was a piranha located in the water right below it. I decided, “Why not try creating the Loch Ness Monster? It will kill the piranha, and then I can climb its neck up the cliff.” All did not go according to plan, as the Loch Ness Monster was created, dropped into the water, and after it killed the piranha, it bashed its head into me and killed me afterwards. I couldn’t help but laugh at not only the silliness of the situation, but my absurd thinking that this “monster” would allow me to freely climb up its neck.
Where Scribblenauts falters is in its implementation. You will definitely struggle with the controls, since the stylus is the only way to control your movement on screen. The d-pad merely controls where the camera moves on screen. If you need to jump to get somewhere, good luck. This isn’t as big a problem on the Puzzle mode, where you really just need to create items to satisfy people or deal with conditions. But in the Adventure mode, it can get downright frustrating since you don’t have the accuracy to move yourself or objects the way you want in order to get to the level’s star. Being able to create thousands of items is a very innovative feature, but not being able to handle them or the environment in an intuitive way is what really holds this game back from being a serious game of the year contender. I’ve pretty much already abandoned playing the Adventure half of the game because I can’t handle the unresponsive controls and sloppy physics engine.
cmfl3x may of course feel differently than I do about the game, but to me Scribblenauts ultimately could not deliver on its hype. I love innovation in video games, but it should not override implementation. I believe anyone who plays it will get a kick out of it the first couple hours – the innovation and charm of the game have enough to draw anyone in. The problem is the gameplay mechanics don’t hold up well enough to really help you get through the entire game, so my parting thoughts are that you should definitely try it, but not necessarily buy it. Oh, and one other thing to note – as an adult with little imagination these days, I had a hard time thinking about “unrealistic fantasy” items to create. Here I was trying to scale a cliff with a grappling hook that has wonky implementation in the game, but someone else would just create wings and fly up. So the game can be pretty difficult if your imagination isn’t what it once was. Maybe this game is really best for kids who can think of silly things such as sombrero wearing eagles?
If my wife ever gives me my DS back I can figure out how I feel about the game. She’s been busy creating guinea pigs and flower eating sheep and stuff like that…I guess that tells you the game does have a lot of appeal for some non gamers.
I was walking by the Nintendo store by Rockefeller Center on last sunday and saw a huge crowd lined up before the store opened to buy the game. All of them were wearing this red hat thing – wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to be.
haha yeah i saw a photo of that (http://kotaku.com/5358398/why-did-the-roosters-wait-on-the-side-of-the-road) and loved it! the main character in the game, Maxwell, wears a cute rooster hat and headphones and I believe that’s what everyone that pre-ordered the game got. One of the better pre-order bonuses out there I’d say!