Scribblenauts Review (DS) ~ Colton

This game could get away with murder.

It has some of the worst graphics I've ever seen on the DS (here's to you, Drawn to Life), has a buggy control scheme, and the NPCs that you are occasionally paired with make Ashley from Resident Evil 4 look competent in comparison.

Those flaws could crush any mortal game in an instant. Any normal game with those qualities would be selling for $7.99 on the used shelf of your local gaming store. But not this game.

Why?

BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING SCRIBBLENAUTS.

You want to see a bear and an emu duke it out on Mars? Done. You want to chase a priest atop a Tyrannosaurus Rex while wearing a false mustache down the streets of a city? An easy feat. You want Batman to duke it out with a giant penis while President Obama cowers in fear? You can't do that, actually (the game restricts use of copyrighted characters, vulgarities, and proper nouns), BUT IT WOULD BE SO COOL IF YOU COULD.

The entire premise of Scribblenauts can be summed up by its tagline: “Write Anything. Solve Everything.” You progress through levels of increasingly difficult puzzles, using your incredible power to draw anything to solve your way to getting the “Starite,” the metaphorical checkered flag for each level. This game is not about progressing through the levels, though. Far from it. The Starite is just a gimmick to hold the game together. If the designers had their druthers, this would be an open sandbox game where you just did whatever the hell you wanted until you got bored. However, since the puzzle mode exists, I am obligated to spend a little time on it.

The puzzles in Scribblenauts range from “Heh, I can just walk over there and pick up the Starite” to “FUCKING HELL I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY GODDAMN ZOMBIES.” On one level, you could simply have to melt a block of ice away from the Starite in order to obtain it. In the next, you might be suspended on a small patch of dirt in a room made of lava. Which, when you take into consideration that the protagonist, Maxwell, occasionally decides to run into walls at random without your consent (due to the completely shattered control scheme), spells nothing short of an instant, crispy death.

The most infuriating levels, however, are those in which you are paired with a tagalong NPC, which happens far to often for one's mental health. In one level, you have to reunite a knight with his lovely princess. However, the princess is guarded by a giant, generic monster and a witch. In a SURPRISE TWIST, if you harm the witch, you fail the level! "Easy enough," you say to yourself, perhaps cracking your knuckles, "Send a superhuman over to slay the monster and trap the witch inside a makeshift house! All I need to do is hop across this gap, walk over to the cliff, summon a trampoline to give me that little boost to the top of the cliff, and presto, one princess. Now, to hop over the gap..." You frown. "Okay, the knight fell into the chasm. Restart the level, I guess. Hero kills the monster, trap the witch. Jump the gap, knight clears it this time, no problem. Make a trampoline and-- Okay, seriously, Mr. Knight, why did destroy my trampoline with your sword? Was that really necessary? Now I have to make another-- You killed that one too, you enormous fucker. You killed my goddamn trampoline. Do you have any idea how long it takes to type trampoline? It takes much less time to write “gun,” if you get my drift. Okay, one more-- YOU SON OF A BITCH. You know what? Helicopter. I'm going to make a helicopter, tie a rope to it, tie you to the other end of the rope, and airlift you to your lover. I'll drop this rope down to you and-- You cut up the rope. You son of a WHORE, you cut up the ROPE. Do you not care about seeing your-- You know what? Your bitch girlfriend doesn't have a sword. I'll tie the rope to her, drag her down to your level, get the Starite, and get the fuck away from YOU. There. Done. You've got your girl. I hope you have plenty of RETARDED BABIES. They'd be JUST LIKE THEIR DADDY."

But I digress. Perhaps even more mentally trying than the princess level is the level where you have to get a brave female explorer past a monkey and a lion (who are both, incidentally, hell-bent on killing her) in order to get to an outhouse. However, environmentalist hippies that the developers are, you are not allowed to kill the animals. The explorer NPC, however, has the bizarre tendency to fling herself willingly into the outstretched paws of the murderous lion, suffering a gristly death and making me restart the level. Again. And again. And again. I won't go into detail, but I ended up chaining the explorer to her tent while I airlifted the animals onto higher ground to prevent her from ritualistic suicide. Apparently, being devoured by bloodthirsty jungle animals is less of a trial than a full bladder.

But again, I digress. Personal problems with the game aside, Scribblenauts is good. It's an innovative concept that was well-executed, but too much focus was put on the gimmick of the game instead of the game itself. If a rerelase or sequel to Scribblenauts was ever made, it would be a masterpiece if the developers took the time to repair the movement controls and maybe touch up the graphics a little. All in all, Scribblenauts is a game worth looking into if you've got a spare $30 laying around.

Overall Score: 8/10