Scribblenauts Review [DS]

17 Sep 2009 at 17:32:13 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (DS)

Scribblenauts is an excellent example of misdirection, because we've all been fooled. With every early reveal, I know that my thoughts, at least, were along the lines of “Is that possible? How do they do that? That can't work like that, can it? How've they got so many words in there?” and then, inevitably, “...I wonder if they've included X in there?” where X is anything from Santa to Satan to Cthulhu to Longcat.

The answer to all of the above is yes. It is possible. They have done that. It does work like that. They have got that many words in there. And, yes, just about everything you can think of is in there, as long as it's not obscene or under copyright or alcohol. What nobody seemed to ask was “Is it going to be a good game?” Answering that question is going to take a little more time.

Scribblenauts is, at times, a thing of beauty. You control Maxwell. Maxwell has, on every level, a variety of tasks to complete; on Action levels he has to get to a Starite – the random gubbins he's after – while on Puzzle levels, you have to do something to first make the Starite appear. This can be anything from winning a race, to stopping a boat from crashing into an iceberg, to protecting a picnic from ants without upsetting the nearby hippy. To do this, you have pretty much everything you can imagine. Really. Using your notebook in the upper right, you tap in a word, and it appears in the world, fully physical and ready for action. Need to chop down a tree? Try an axe, or a chainsaw. Perhaps a flamethrower would work – I don't know. I haven't tried that, but I can't see why it wouldn't work. (Hint: On a level where you have the clue “Play ball,” and there's a baseball player standing opposite, things like baseballs and cricket balls will work. Grenades, no matter how amusing the idea may seem, won't.)

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? When it works, it is. You've got over 200 levels of puzzling goodness, and a dictionary with lots and lots and lots of words in. It's just a shame that Maxwell controls like a garbage truck. With no wheels. Underwater. Encased in cement. On ice.

The touch-screen controls everything. Oh, you can use the d-pad to move the camera around and although it resets itself annoyingly quickly, you can work around that. Instead, we'll concern ourselves with the fact that you tap on the touch-screen to make Maxwell move, or to move an object, or to have him use something, or to attack something, or to do anything that isn't moving the camera.

Which in itself probably wouldn't be so bad if Maxwell did what he was told. Losing a level because the shitbrick decided to walk into a lava pit rather than jump over it is bad enough; trying to tie a helicopter to a sheep with a rope is a nightmare. God forbid you ever try to do any of that while something's trying to kill you, as that makes it all the more amusing. And by amusing I mean horrible. A single mistap – very easy with some smaller characters or narrow items, like the aforementioned rope – could send Maxwell careening into death or danger, or could make him throw away anything he's carrying. Worse still, the game sometimes misinterprets even the most accurate of taps, which makes anything that requires swift or accurate action an abject nightmare. And every time you fail you'll see the mission description again, as well as a very slow pan around all of the pertinent mission points.

There is the flipside that you have pretty much everything you can imagine at your command, so with a bit of imagination, you can probably think of a way to solve the puzzle that doesn't require so much effort. Probably. Because generally, I couldn't, which either condemns my skill at the game or condemns the controls further. One way or another, no matter what I tried, the controls would get in the way. Maxwell would knock over whatever I'd put down when I asked him to jump over it, or would happily leap to his death when attempting to fly, or would push something mission-critical when asked to pick up a chain.

All ...

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