REVIEW
Scribblenauts
By Filipe Salgado - September 21st, 2009
Scribblenauts’ concept is revolutionary. No longer are we as players shackled down by how the developers want us to play. No, now we’re allowed to call the shots. By simply writing down a word, we conjure that thing into existence. A gun is a way to solve a problem, but not just the only way. The promise behind Scribblenauts is that our only limit is our imaginations. At its best Scribblenauts backs up this idealism, but all too often it’s unable to fulfill it.
Scribblenauts’ best moments happen in challenge mode. Given a scenario and a brief objective, you’re left to figure out how to solve a problem, and receive a star for your trouble should you solve it. For example, there’s a girl jumping on a diving board, and the objective is to get her into the water. I open up the game’s notepad and type in “Shaggoth.” The Elder God scares her into plunging into the deep end. I could also summon a stun gun and control Maxwell, the star of the game, to zap her into water. Or, I can bulldoze her into the pool. Anything’s possible, right?
Well, not really. Why can’t I summon a swim coach to encourage her into the water, a drowning parent to use as bait, or a banana peel on the diving board? Candy should also be able to lure her into the water (a behaviour that works on kids in other levels of the game). Forgetting the fact that I’m the world’s worst swim coach, I don’t think any of these potential solutions is stretching the promise the game’s making.
It’s easy to believe that anything is possible because the game drips with imagination. The game’s tableau possibilities range from the fantastical (a knight trying to rescue his maiden from a witch) to mundane (getting past a bully to use a vending machine) and each scene is filled with charming details. One stage has you getting kids ready for school while a lawyer, who I assume is with child services, walks around the decrepit house filled with broken items like a leaking shower but without any parents in sight. The game allows you to scan any items on the stage to find out their names, which is a useful tip that helped me learn some of the many words supported by the game’s 20,000-plus lexicon.
There is also a set of action stages in the game. In these stages, the star is visible from the start and the trick is to simply get to it. Action stages are more like platformers. Creativity is much more useful here, but not as satisfying. Imagine the all too common scenario of a group of enemies standing between you and the star. It’s far too easy to use a weapon, or summon somebody else to do the dirty work. Worse are the number of stages involving getting an object from one end of the map to another. Again, these maps all boil down to summoning something like a helicopter or a submarine to haul cargo. There are creative ways to do these tasks, such as using a Pegasus instead of a plane, but the maps usually don’t necessitate being that imaginative. The choice ends up seeming superficial. Why ride an ostrich when a motorcycle will do? It’s also easy to fall into patterns. It’s disappointing that a game that tries to avoid gaming foibles tends to fall into a pretty common one: Why use anything else when you have a rocket launcher, or in Scribblenauts’ case, why use anything else when Cthulhu will do?
The platformer stages also highlight the control problems with the game. You control Maxwell using the stylus, tapping on empty space to get him to move. Occasionally, he might actually go where you tell him to. Interacting with objects is more finicky. Tapping on an item will bring up a menu with potential interactions… sometimes. Sometimes, he’ll just run to it, without a care for the many dangers in between. Or there’s the problem with navigating Maxwell over a bridge and accidentally tapping the bridge, removing it from under Maxwell’s feet, dropping him to his demise. Then there’s the annoying process of attaching a rope to two items. These problems are common, and especially frustrating when your complex machinations have fallen to ruin because of a misplaced tap.
I have to respect 5th Cell for their ambitious undertaking. Their attempt at changing the way we play traditional video games is admirable in its scope. I can also say that Scribblenauts is thoroughly soaked in imagination and charm, two things most games lack. While the occasional highs the game offers don’t make up for its glaring central flaws, the times when Scribblenauts made me feel like a genius were some of the best gaming moments of the year. It’s on these all too rare times that I actually felt like my imagination was the limit.
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16 responses so far:Subscribe to the Toronto Thumbs RSS feed to be notified when new articles are published.
you are dead inside.
Having valid criticisms makes one dead inside?
Sobe’s right, I’m actually a zombie.
That explains why you bit my skull open the other day. This might also explain my recent cravings for raw meat.
you critisize the game due to one solution working for many puzzles, have you attempted to complete the game with 3 completions for each puzzle, or just 1?
you have valid and from what i’ve read and heard elsewhere not uncommon criticisms. Mostly the control issues but as far as item selection goes I can’t help but raise an eyebrow. I haven’t played the game yet so i won’t debate this with you until I do but you can’t build this game and NOT include a rocket launcher. You also can’t make the rocket launcher less powerful than a sword. So if you feel that you kept using the same items over and over again, my initial reaction is to put that on you and not the game. If the game has a plethora of tools and they do work and you choose not to use them you can’t criticize the game for lack of creativity. It reminds me of when all the game writers complained that E3 was ‘too big’ and they wanted it smaller and *surprise* it sucked to the point where noone cared when it was smaller.
a) I think you did mention issues with using some of the tools
b) you ended the article saying the game was “thoroughly soaked in imagination and charm”
c) the rest of the issues you raised seem perfectly reasonable and valid
so I figure you aren’t completely out of your mind or anything. I haven’t heard anything yet that has brought the game down in my eyes so it’s still on my ‘hype wagon’
Sobe:
Fore the stages that involved transporting items or dispatching enemies, there were a lot of different tools that I had that had the same effect. A gun, a shotgun, and a ray gun all have similar properties. Trying other things, like I did with the girl/diving board mission, usually led to frustration because some of the choices I made, that seemed valid to me, weren’t recognized by the game.
It’s hard not to get annoyed with the game sometimes, though. Like, the second goddamn mission tells you to catch a butterfly. I make the obvious leap and summon a butterfly net and…it doesn’t work. He’s too far out of reach. What the hell, Scribblenauts?
Wolfkin: I tried using varied tools, to see what could be done. I even watched somebody play for a few hours to see how they got around some of the problems, just to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. I think it’s worth checking out, and I look forward to 5th Cell’s future games, but it’s held back by it’s controls, and doesn’t fulfill the promise it makes.
the butterfly was simply too high, butterfly net was a perfectly valid solution but required use of a ladder etc to reach the correct height :)
it is hard to see the game for what it is due to the amount of hype that was created and how much the idea of the game was built up. but looking at it for what it is, once past the original stage of dissapointment and realise how to work within the games mechanics, i really think its an amazing game, control issues aside of course.
Girl+Diving board was a very annoying level, as was bully+vending machines, havn’t got the yellow star for the bully one yet :o
as for the similar item issue, try to get the bonus for an item you havn’t used before as much as you can, then you find yourself racking your brains and trying to think of words and objects to complete a solution that you havnt used before, I found it more enjoyable once I started to try and do that as much as possible!
Dying by accidently running into a pit after setting up a huge contraption happens way too often though and is probably the worst thing about the game, d+pad and L for jump should have been the controls for maxwell for sure.
Good review, Filipe. And I agree, the game’s cool in concept and generally cool in execution, but there are definitely some drawbacks when you come up with a solution that would work only to find out that the database doesn’t have the object you’d intended.
What would be amazing is if they could supply wifi patches for the game which are updated files for the game’s database. Have the designers hear out open forum suggestions from players for other objects, and then routinely offer updates to the game to accommodate for the newer items.
One other drawback I’ve experienced is finding a solution which wasn’t first intended in the level. For instance: the penguin wants the two smallest fish from the water. Ok, well hooking the two smallest fish (below the bigger fish) is hard to do straight-up with the fishing rod, so I figure I’ll get the bigger fish out of the way by distracting them with food away from where I’m trying to fish. So first off, there’s no “fish food” in the database. It showed up as just “food”: a steak. Ok, so I dump the steak in the water, but when I go to do another one and mis-lay the steak, the penguin snaps it up. And a second one. And voila! The level’s done! So it wasn’t that the penguin wanted the two smallest fish so much as it wanted to eat. And evidently, steaks will do. A happy result, to be sure, as I finished the level faster than I otherwise would’ve, but still, different than the hint would first have me approaching the solution.
All in all, however, I’m still enjoying it. And once I’m done with it, I’ll be getting more pleasure out of hearing how my wife and friends solve the levels.
sobe & Wolfkin: I think that while the game allows for a broad variety of options, it doesn’t encourage them, so players will sometimes default to standbys. In fact, it arguably discourages variety by rewarding speed and fewer objects used. So I can waste time by figuring out how to, say, get down the shaft and past the angry shark and up the other shaft to get the starite, or I can call up my trusty fishing rod and snag the starite immediately without setting off the tripwire, and get a completion bonus up the wazoo for being so quick and so far under par. It rewards the familiar (ie. the tried and true and used most effectively) vs. the experimental (ie. slower and more uncertain).
The point of the game, after all, is to complete levels. And personally, if I can do that quickly and easily, it beats the hell out of trial and error with needlessly roundabout ways to finish.
Could any level be finished numerous ways? Absolutely. But while it’s certainly cool that no one else who plays the game will have all the same solutions and experiences I did, Filipe’s point is a valid one: unless players go out of their way to experiment with how to accomplish levels multiple ways, any one player will likely start to rely on a personal tool box of default objects which they have continued success with.
‘unless players go out of their way to experiment with how to accomplish levels multiple ways, any one player will likely start to rely on a personal tool box of default objects which they have continued success with.’
Then the quality of the game comes from how you yourself approach it and choose to interact with the levels and items available? I started to not care about the items used bonus’ on the later levels to just complete them in cool ways. At its core Scribblenauts is a game totally unlike any other and I think everyone should try it, if only to curse themselves and their lack of creativity!
But you said it yourself Sobe:
“once past the original stage of dissapointment and realise how to work within the games mechanics, i really think its an amazing game, control issues aside of course.”
Working within the game’s mechanics was what this game was trying to avoid. You make the game work for you, not the other way around. As Reay stated, the game rewards speed and number of objects instead of creativity. The amount of points you get for style pales to the amount for time and objects under par.
I think, though, that we all agree about the game, fundamentally. We think it’s a worthwhile experience, but it has some control issues and falls short of its promise. We all feel the same way about the game, the problems just have more weight for me. That’s a personal preference, and it’s cool that you disagree. I’m hoping people are reading this discussion and getting a better feel for the issues that game has.
You’ll get enough points to unlock everything after a short time though, then I just found I stopped paying attention to them lol.
I used a flamethrower on that damn butterfly, it lowered then I netted it, I smiled with evil delight… there are many sick twisted ways in doing things in this game ;-)
p.s Try the teleporter, type in God, type in Eskimo(for the fact its politically incorrect), titmouse is infact a bird, Rooster and cat can be conjured up using vulgar words, you can get a cadavar, Bigfoot’s in the game as is the Chupacabra. That’s all for now folks!