What to say about this game… I honestly and this is sincere. I don’t know if it’s a good game or if it’s a bad game.
Basically put 2 hrs into this game, there are 10 worlds I believe with like 11 stages per world. However each stage has a puzzle mode or action mode. Puzzle mode you have to solve something, action mode you have to reach your destination and/or do something. The whole act of getting through the game is you have your imagination at your disposal and it’s up to you to figure out how to get through the stages using the notepad to write whatever it is you want to summon. Like reading that… you’re probably thinking… hey that’s a pretty damn cool concept. Surprisingly… it’s rather difficult because I even found myself reusing the same things over and over. You can which is both good and bad. Maybe it’s to my personal fault that I suck at being creative when getting through a stage. However this is also applied in the game as well. After passing a stage, you can replay each stage for mastery. Basically you go through the stage 3 times in a row but you have to use different items/tools to get through a level. But there is still ways around things.
For example I had to knock out this Starlite from a tree. Starlites are your end goal of the stage, you need to acquire them to basically beat the stage… think Super Mario with the flag. Essentially there was this one stage where the Starlite was in the tree and knocked it out of the tree with a baseball. Then a basketball… then a football. All balls but DIFFERENT items. There are work arounds. Heck I’m pretty sure I could’ve summoned a spear or rock to throw at it. Before all of this though is the tutorial world you go through teaching you how to play the game. I will have to say that the controls… suck. Now it makes sense because both the button layout and the dpad are used for the same camera. I think the reason why they couldn’t map the buttons is because there are too many damn objects in the game to summon. Hello, over 22,000 things. So based on going with what’s logical and making it work? That’s a fucking tall order on design decision wise. So on a purely technical level and this game being on the DS… AMAZING achievement. But because movement of your character is stylus based, I think it would like that Zelda game dragging it around. BUT Zelda does a much more intuitive job of it because the game is over the top view. Scribblenauts is strictly a side scroller so you either drag left or right or up to activate flying for example. However the dragging of left to right becomes so rudimentary that your character will automatically jump over a ledge if it’s high enough because the game needed to be that easy to get over some level aspects. Again it’s here where the game is more so… bad gameplay design. There are instances where you need precise movement in the game but the stylus does not do that. I had to restart a level like possibly 10 times because I kept falling into a pit and kept being killed by this shark. Interactivity with some of the objects is also difficult, because your character moves around stupidly and 90% of the time, he moves way too fast.
But you click on something and it gives you options. While yes you can touch this and that and eventually use things by dragging. It’s almost a cheat and at the same time… the game loses it’s tactility here with how you end up interacting with some objects. Now in respect to what you actually summon and it goes hand in hand with how you beat stages as well. There is a set way to beat a stage and for the most part each object will do the exact same thing for it’s intended use for that level. So the fun of the game is how creative you can get in respect to beat that stage. You get bonuses for summoning something new, not using weapons and going under par for items/tools used. Think golf here. So a level might have 4 items you can use to beat the stage. A lower score gives you more points, you can go over that 4, hell I was testing things out and went up to 10. But there if I beat the level I would finish with a +6 for my par and it would negatively impact my performance. There is ways to beat a stage stylistically which I don’t fully understand yet. It explained in the tutorial but I blazed through it to play the game. Tutorial took way too long.
Now the actual game itself. Again the meat of this game is using your imagination to get out of these either puzzle or action based predicaments. I played the entire first world. Beat it both in puzzle and action mode. It took about 2 hrs or more, I stopped taking track of time. All I know is there was a moment where I limited my workout in the evening to just my 340+ ab routine in 15min. I say that based on working out normally would’ve taken an extra hour and I wanted to straight up play more. Now I have to imagine these levels or puzzles or action modes will get more difficult along the way. This game is basically Professor Layton except with Layton I’m getting a real cerebral exercise based on intelligence and like Sherlock Holmes shit. Scribblenauts is the same but the imagination is a cheat. Basically it’s the game where “have you ever wanted to just take a gun and kill the badguy and be over with the level” type of idea. Because yes you can do that. I used a time machine because I couldn’t get past this tornado level and it took me to medieval times. It wasn’t overally apparent but I had to defeat a warlock. So I summoned a gun walked up to the warlock and shot him and he died. Basically you had to bring the princess to her father and then you got your Starlite. Beat the level. I still hadn’t beat the tornado level, tried a dinosaur, summoned God, summoned the devil, tried to fly over it… even summoned a nuclear bomb that destroyed the tornado but killed me in the process as well. Basically I was at wits end and that’s what this game is… it’s like… no way this will work. But I summoned “shelter” basically this steal house appeared my guy moved inside the home and I dragged the shelter past the tornado and reached the Starlite. Everyone is going to have one of these moments… the wtf, no way that worked and I can’t believe that worked or I can’t believe I just did that to beat the stage. That’s Scribblenauts and it’s magic.
However I’m still early into the game but I’m guessing it’ll be more of these moments and the difficulty ramps up a bit towards the end. Is that enough though? That shark level I was talking about above, was frustrating based on I couldn’t move my guy properly. As your trying to solve how to get through a stage and your guy does something stupid based on a very imprecise stylus movement. Sometimes shit doesn’t even work. Yet that same shark level had a wtf moment when I couldn’t get past the shark until I decided to summon a killer whale which defeated the shark for me. Then I simply dragged the killer whale away and my path was clear. That’s another thing… when I mentioned summoning objects above there is a limit based on how many can be applied within a level. There is a meter that fills up and once it’s filled you can’t summon anything else on screen. However simply removing an object frees up space. Progressing through the game as I mentioned is based on performance. The better you do the more “ollars” you rack up. “ollars” is the money and you use it to unlock music, avatars and most importantly… the next world. Right now I got over 10,000 ollars off the first world. I could buy 2 or 3 worlds right now. The last world costs 25,000. The music isn’t too bad either, the usual lighthearted midi stuff. Catchy moments.
Now the graphics of this game… the visuals. They’re shit. It’s like someone created this game with a retarded version of MS Paint and figured it was good enough. Also the input screen where you write your words… doesn’t work well at all. Not only do you have to write your word one letter at a time, it sometime can’t even register for shit on what letter you wrote. I gave up after the first try… writing the word “ladder.” My D registered as C like 2 or 3 times and an O. Finally passing the “Ladd” once my E didn’t register right I said fuck it and went to the type screen. Basically a fully qwerty and you just punch in your words. The overall interface could be better and it’s here even button inputs would help to clear the screen. It’s a small thing to ask but it’s like… they defaulted everything to the stylus. Again menu design etc, not the greatest thing either. Ok I think that’s all I have to say…
Keep in mind I’m 2 hrs in, basically 1 world down. Right now I’m feeling as this game can still potentially excite me or just heavily disappoint me. On a purely technical level the game is an amazing achievement. But as a game… it’s not shaping up to be that same amazement. It’s like… meh this stage was ridiculous, this stage was interesting, this stage was difficult. I think the fun is really based on how creative you can get. It might be the person I am… I’m analytically creative so I’m thinking always what’s efficient. Problem is with what you summon, you just don’t know wtf that object/tool is going to do. Like I summoned God to fight the Tornado… nothing happened. It’s like… ok guess that didn’t work. Incidentally the start screen you can play around immediately and just mess around, summoning stuff. Some people might have more fun with that then the actual game. It really depends what you’re looking to get out of it. It’s like Ultimate Alliance 2… I know what I’m gonna get from it. At the same time Scribblenauts is not a bad thing, because not knowing is half the excitement sometimes. However… based on my initial playthrough… I’m learning and assuming more of what to expect. And I’m not expecting much at this point.
That’s it! That’s my initial impression essay/early review/thesis statement.
