That's right, I'm making another review again, have fun.


Today I'm reviewing Scribblenauts, the game where you "Write anything, solve everything."



Scribblenauts in a nutshell:


You play as a yellow guy who wears a three-fingered rubber glove as a balaclava. Your objective is to collect 'starites,' which are like stars but apparently have a 'rite' at the end of them.

There are two types of level, action levels and puzzle levels. In an action level, the starite is at one end of the map, you're at the other, and there are various dubious things you'll need to get past. But in the end, all you need to do is get to the starite.

Puzzle levels are slightly different, because they involve using your brain. Bad news for those of you who are microscopic organisms, jellyfish, chavs, or any other creature which is by definition crainally lacking.

For puzzle levels, you have to fulfil certain objectives, then the starite appears. These vary from stuff like 'give the chef a cooked meal' to 'kill all the rats.' Menial stuff like that. Because guys like you with magical notepads that can spawn objects and people would totally use your powers to clean out basement vermin, right? ¬_¬

Yeah, the whole 'magic notebook' thing. Basically, your character, Maxwell, has somehow acquired a magical notebook which will spawn any object he writes in it. It is using objects created by this notebook that you are able to complete levels and stuff.


Alright, down to the whole 'rating individual parts' bit that everyone always seems to stick to.

Graphics-
7/10

They're a little blocky, sure, but they've got a pretty consistent style going on, and they're pretty nicely made. Animation's a little dodgy though, when you run your arms literally just pivot back and forth. They don't even have elbows or anything. And when you jump you kinda do the splits mid-air, which is ridiculous when you think about it, but I guess I'm being a little nitpicking now.

But the thing that irks me the most about the game is related to graphics. I'm not going to drag down the graphics score because of this, but it's a point I feel it's important to make.

Basically, the whole premise of the game is that they have a massive dictionary full of fun and exciting objects (supposedly 22802 of them), with infinite replay value because there's so many bloody things you can spawn.

HOWEVER, that's a nice idea, but in reality, they can't draw 22802 unique sprites, each with its own unique and individual properties. As a result, if you say, spawned a pizza, most NPCs would run towards it and eat it. That's understandable. However, if you spawn a bread roll, soup, noodles, chocolate or basically any other foodstuff, they'll all behave exactly the same. Get what I mean?

Also, sprite sharing. There's no point in having 22802 if five or so of them are literally exactly the same in appearance and behaviour. A nice example is that if you spawn a 'virgin' it uses exactly the same sprite as a 'gamer.' The point is, it isn't really 22802 objects if many of them are literally identical bar the name. As some guy once probably said: "A rose by any other name is also a flower, or flora, or vegetation or a bloom or a petal or basically any other piece of aesthetically pleasing fauna."

Sound/music-
6/10

Music's not bad, but very repetitive. Sounds are questionable. Every time any kind of sentient being is hurt in any way, be it by fire, knife, throwing star or having a combine harvester dropped on them, produces exactly the same 'grunt in pain' noise. Oh yeah, that counts for drowning too.


Gameplay-
5/10

More or less every level can be solved with a combination of the following- An invisibility cloak, a spiked steel ball, an air vent, a pterodactyl, wings, and Excalibur. Give or take.

So yeah, the levels are usually pretty amusing, and some of the later ones are pretty challenging, but it's really all a matter of spamming the same useful objects again and again.

Controls are appalling. The idea is that you barely ever use the buttons, bar for scrolling the screen around. as a result, you have to tap on objects to interact with them, but if you miss them then you could end up running forward until you fall into a pit of lava. He automatically jumps, and if you tap somewhere, no matter what is in his path, he will run towards it.

Also, when the screen is scrolled along the level to look at something other than Maxwell, it stays put for a few seconds and then zips back to Maxwell, which has caused me to accidentally click the wrong thing and fall to my death or be eaten by a velociraptor more times than I can count.

Super Scribblenauts, the sequel, improves on these poor controls, with the added function of adjectives! The adjectives, while still not perfect, do add a lot more variety and replay value.

Replay value-
9/10

Despite my comments earlier on the sprite-sharing of many words, it remains a very creative and enjoyable game. The moment you turn it on you go onto the title screen, which doubles as a sandbox mode, in which you can mess around with random stuff to your heart's content. This is where I spend most of my time on it. I like drowning accountants, or angering Cthulhu.

That's a point, it doesn't allow certain kinds of words. vulgar words, sexual ones, verbs and adjectives, proper nouns, copyrighted or offensive material, brand names, etc...

I often use God as a bodyguard, because he's automatically friendly towards you and can zap basically anything to death. Also, if you spawn cupid, then kill him and steal his bow, any creature you shoot with the bow will become friendly towards you. Useful for riding along on the back of a kraken or something like that.

So yeah, it's a really casual game, not the kind of thing you'd like if yo're only into hardcore gaming, but great to while away a couple of hours messing around on the title-screen or completing a couple of the levels.

Overall

I'd give this game an arbitrary 6.5/10. It's not a serious buy if you want a hardcore game to while away many hours with tricky puzzles and exciting action, because frankly it's not going to deliver that. But if you want a game you can cruise through easily while having an occasional laugh at what they forgot to put into the dictionary, or just trying to see how many waves of giant worms God can defeat before finally dying, this is will do just fine.