Scribblenauts: A Review

This is late!

Well, later than I wanted  it. Apologies.


Systems: Nintendo DS

Visuals: See the cover. Cute graphics, tailor-made for the small screen of the DS. There’s some pretty good detail in the smaller objects, and lot of variety.

Music: Basic happy tracks that drone in the background while you’re thinking of what helpful object to summon as versus to what would be the most hilarious thing to summon to help you solve the puzzle/problem.

Controls: Moving the character around with only the stylus is a little frustrating at times. He automatically jumps onto things, or over gaps and objects, and it doesn’t always want to work. It’s a good thing this game isn’t based on how he moves, but on how the objects you summon do their job. Use the D-Pad to scroll around the level smoothly to place objects and manipulate the environment without having to move the main character.

Story: You are Maxwell. You are a hero to all because everyone is helpless and rely on you to solve the problem. You wear a weird red hat and your magic notebook can summon everything, from a Burka to night vision goggles to mythical creatures like the Pegasus and Cthulhu.

Game Play: Write things in your notebook (or choose the keypad for faster typing) to summon objects to solve the problem. Sometimes there are things to move or kill, switches to press and things to avoid. (“Reunite the shepherd with his flock, but don’t hurt the wolf!” I want to hurt the wolf, the wolf is a jerk, man.) There are 10 different environments. The first one is unlocked after “world 0,” the training level. At the end of each puzzle you get a rating for time completed, style, par (a suggested number of how many objects you should use) and that rating tells you how many “Ollars” you win, the game currency for buying new avatars, the songs and all other levels. It’s not hard to make Ollars, especially because you can replay each level up to 4 times to solve it with different objects.

Final Answer: Don’t go out and get a DS just for this game, but do try to play it if you know someone who has one. If you have a DS, play the game. (Buy it, borrow it. Rent it?) With a few hundred thousand different ways to get things done the game has taken an interesting twist on “replay.”

Rach’s Rating : 9.0
Some of the difficulty is annoying early in the game, thus no .5.

And, just so you know, the Vampires are afraid of Crosses and Holy Water.

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