Review: Scribblenauts [NDS]
Heals, 18-Sep-09 »
Scribblenauts [DS] - A review by Zoidberg
Front cover of the box featuring the main man Maxwell
Scribblenauts is an interesting puzzle game in where the game presents you with a puzzle and you have to solve it using an almost infinite supply of objects, tools and weapons limited by only your imagination and to a lesser extent... your spelling.
From a Brief look at the box and some of the screenshots I was instantly attracted to the basic cartoon artwork, it really sits well with this type of game and I'm sure it will attract a lot of people to the game.
Jumping into the game you're greeted by a brightly coloured menu where you can walk around and spawn items in a "sandbox" style feature or just press start where can create your self a profile. After you've finished typing your name you're greeted with another menu with 4 buttons with no writing on them but pretty pictures instead which have no meaning until you've finished the tutorial, so I took a gamble and pressed the pretty picture of the castles along the top of the touch screen and was taken in game and was forced to play through a painfully long and frustratingly easy tutorial, all they really needed to do was show you the "inspect" button, which is totally useless and I didn't use it once throughout the whole time I played, and the "notepad" button which is the key to the whole game as it's this notepad tool that allows you to spawn anything your mind desires, as long as it's not naughty... The main problem with the tutorial is that only 3-4 words appear in the dialog box at any given time so you have to tap like 100 times just for the game to tell your one sentence!
After the tutorial I was about ready to quit but I pushed through and was rewarded with some mildly interesting puzzles! The aim of the puzzles is you're presented with a problem and you must spawn items by writing them into the notepad, to achieve the maximum amount of "Ollars" you must complete the objective in the shortest amount of time while using the least amount of objects. Ollars are the currency this games uses to unlock more levels, new avatars and "songs" if they can be called that, I thought the whole soundtrack was annoying but I'm sure it might entertain a 7 year old. The controls do take some getting used to, I some how managed to managed to handcuff my self to the policeman in the first level instead of handing them to him, but once you play it for 2 mins you're pretty much as good as you'll ever get.
Essentially how the game works. Spawn stuff to get to star.
This game has a very shallow learning curve and I never really felt challenged while playing. Hell the biggest challenge I found was in the first level when I came against some sort of indestructible fighting fish who managed to shake off all my attacks, lest the be in the form of firearms, swords or even using a fishing rod to yank him out of the water, but he just leapt up off the ground and went for my jugular! In the end I solved the problem by employing a bigger fish in the form of a shark to do my bidding but then I had another problem what the hell do I do about this shark? Luckily you can destroy any items you create so that was easy. After this first challenge I felt I had mastered the game almost and almost all of the puzzles could be solved with a jetpack, a machine gun or a T-rex and while this game tries to combat that from happening it has an "advanced mode" where you're required to solve the same puzzle 3 times over with out using the same objects which might sound good it get really old really quickly.
After the first 5 Levels I was finding my self doing the same thing over and over to complete the missions. One example, there is a cat that you must retrieve from a high tree for it's owner. Normally I'd just get the jetpack, fly up and grab it, but "no" I thought to my self, lets mix it up a little, I'll shoot that kitten out of the tree with a cannon, that'll be good for a giggle and it was. Later in the game I was presented with a puzzle "Help the old man see better", the obvious thing to do here would be to spawn some glasses but I wanted to go one better. So I type in "laser eye surgery"... Not in the game, so I get a laser gun and shoot him in the face, apparently not the same thing and I fail the puzzle. Which leads me onto my next problem with this game, there is no punishment for sucking balls at the game. You're just presented with a friendly brightly coloured screen that asks you if you'd like to try again or try a different level. You don't loose any "Ollars" or anything just given another opportunity to prove your worth in this colourful imagination land.
While this game features some very nice artwork it's still devoid of any humor.
These problems aside that thing did happen where my brain interacts with the game and generates fun, for at least 50 of the 220 levels anyway. While this game claims to have "Unlimited Replay Value" because of it's advanced mode and everyone's lust to better their scores on this highly competitive game, it's replay value is pretty limited.
But speaking of competition this game also has a multiplayer function! Unfortunately I didn't get to test this as that would involve one of my friends randomly buying this game before I told them about it, because I wouldn't recommend this game to any of my friends in fear they would come back to me and force feed me the game along with it's package...
Another attempt to increase this games life is the inclusion of a "level editor" which sounds all good but you open it up and you're greeted by another painful tutorial and you can't even create your own levels, you're forced to modify existing levels that you've already completed.
Scribblenauts - Write anything, Solve Everything. Or so the motto goes.
In Conclusion this is game would be fantastic fun if I found it for free on the internet on some advertisement ridden flash game website like onemorelevel.com or the likes. But no, you're expected to pay $59.95 RRP and for what? 3-4 Hours of fun and Plastic box with some pretty colours on it. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather spend my hard earned on. But most likely you'd be buying this game for your sondaughter but then I'd think it'd be too hard for some of the kids out there to comprehend how the game works. There are a lot of things to like about Scribblenauts but it's really not $60 worth of fun.
Power Level: Nearly Approaching 9000 (610)
Hours of gameplay: About 6 Hours to finish all the single player puzzles.
Not as good as: World of Goo (PC), Kirby's Canvas Curse (DS)
Better than: All those "Brain Trainer" games on DS
For more info visit: http://games.kidswb.com/scribblenauts/
Scribblenauts [DS] - A review by Zoidberg
Front cover of the box featuring the main man Maxwell
Scribblenauts is an interesting puzzle game in where the game presents you with a puzzle and you have to solve it using an almost infinite supply of objects, tools and weapons limited by only your imagination and to a lesser extent... your spelling.
From a Brief look at the box and some of the screenshots I was instantly attracted to the basic cartoon artwork, it really sits well with this type of game and I'm sure it will attract a lot of people to the game.
Jumping into the game you're greeted by a brightly coloured menu where you can walk around and spawn items in a "sandbox" style feature or just press start where can create your self a profile. After you've finished typing your name you're greeted with another menu with 4 buttons with no writing on them but pretty pictures instead which have no meaning until you've finished the tutorial, so I took a gamble and pressed the pretty picture of the castles along the top of the touch screen and was taken in game and was forced to play through a painfully long and frustratingly easy tutorial, all they really needed to do was show you the "inspect" button, which is totally useless and I didn't use it once throughout the whole time I played, and the "notepad" button which is the key to the whole game as it's this notepad tool that allows you to spawn anything your mind desires, as long as it's not naughty... The main problem with the tutorial is that only 3-4 words appear in the dialog box at any given time so you have to tap like 100 times just for the game to tell your one sentence!
After the tutorial I was about ready to quit but I pushed through and was rewarded with some mildly interesting puzzles! The aim of the puzzles is you're presented with a problem and you must spawn items by writing them into the notepad, to achieve the maximum amount of "Ollars" you must complete the objective in the shortest amount of time while using the least amount of objects. Ollars are the currency this games uses to unlock more levels, new avatars and "songs" if they can be called that, I thought the whole soundtrack was annoying but I'm sure it might entertain a 7 year old. The controls do take some getting used to, I some how managed to managed to handcuff my self to the policeman in the first level instead of handing them to him, but once you play it for 2 mins you're pretty much as good as you'll ever get.
Essentially how the game works. Spawn stuff to get to star.
This game has a very shallow learning curve and I never really felt challenged while playing. Hell the biggest challenge I found was in the first level when I came against some sort of indestructible fighting fish who managed to shake off all my attacks, lest the be in the form of firearms, swords or even using a fishing rod to yank him out of the water, but he just leapt up off the ground and went for my jugular! In the end I solved the problem by employing a bigger fish in the form of a shark to do my bidding but then I had another problem what the hell do I do about this shark? Luckily you can destroy any items you create so that was easy. After this first challenge I felt I had mastered the game almost and almost all of the puzzles could be solved with a jetpack, a machine gun or a T-rex and while this game tries to combat that from happening it has an "advanced mode" where you're required to solve the same puzzle 3 times over with out using the same objects which might sound good it get really old really quickly.
After the first 5 Levels I was finding my self doing the same thing over and over to complete the missions. One example, there is a cat that you must retrieve from a high tree for it's owner. Normally I'd just get the jetpack, fly up and grab it, but "no" I thought to my self, lets mix it up a little, I'll shoot that kitten out of the tree with a cannon, that'll be good for a giggle and it was. Later in the game I was presented with a puzzle "Help the old man see better", the obvious thing to do here would be to spawn some glasses but I wanted to go one better. So I type in "laser eye surgery"... Not in the game, so I get a laser gun and shoot him in the face, apparently not the same thing and I fail the puzzle. Which leads me onto my next problem with this game, there is no punishment for sucking balls at the game. You're just presented with a friendly brightly coloured screen that asks you if you'd like to try again or try a different level. You don't loose any "Ollars" or anything just given another opportunity to prove your worth in this colourful imagination land.
While this game features some very nice artwork it's still devoid of any humor.
These problems aside that thing did happen where my brain interacts with the game and generates fun, for at least 50 of the 220 levels anyway. While this game claims to have "Unlimited Replay Value" because of it's advanced mode and everyone's lust to better their scores on this highly competitive game, it's replay value is pretty limited.
But speaking of competition this game also has a multiplayer function! Unfortunately I didn't get to test this as that would involve one of my friends randomly buying this game before I told them about it, because I wouldn't recommend this game to any of my friends in fear they would come back to me and force feed me the game along with it's package...
Another attempt to increase this games life is the inclusion of a "level editor" which sounds all good but you open it up and you're greeted by another painful tutorial and you can't even create your own levels, you're forced to modify existing levels that you've already completed.
Scribblenauts - Write anything, Solve Everything. Or so the motto goes.
In Conclusion this is game would be fantastic fun if I found it for free on the internet on some advertisement ridden flash game website like onemorelevel.com or the likes. But no, you're expected to pay $59.95 RRP and for what? 3-4 Hours of fun and Plastic box with some pretty colours on it. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather spend my hard earned on. But most likely you'd be buying this game for your sondaughter but then I'd think it'd be too hard for some of the kids out there to comprehend how the game works. There are a lot of things to like about Scribblenauts but it's really not $60 worth of fun.
Power Level: Nearly Approaching 9000 (610)
Hours of gameplay: About 6 Hours to finish all the single player puzzles.
Not as good as: World of Goo (PC), Kirby's Canvas Curse (DS)
Better than: All those "Brain Trainer" games on DS
For more info visit: http://games.kidswb.com/scribblenauts/
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| Category: | Game Reviews |
| Posted: | 18-Sep-09 9:44:08 pm |
| Author: | Heals |