VIDEO GAMES REVIEW

Scribble through endless possibilities

October 3, 2009

Darren Zenko

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

From Felix the Cat's magical "bag of tricks" to Green Lantern's extraterrestrial Swiss Army ring, the idea of being able to instantly evoke whatever object or artifact your situation calls for is pretty great fantasy material. Frisbee stuck on the roof? No problem, just whip out a ladder or a flying magic carpet. Late for work? One wave of your magic whatsit and you've got a teleportation machine ... or a majestic Pegasus on which to soar above the traffic. This kind of anything-you-can-imagine power is the promise of Scribblenauts – and it almost delivers.

As a puzzle game, Scribblenauts's hundreds of levels each presents a whimsical problem: a cow, fleeing from the butcher's cleaver, is blocking a highway; some vampires threaten a village; a caveman wants an dino-egg omelette, and a fire to cook it. In order to solve these problems, you're going to have to come up with some creative solutions, willing whatever you need into existence simply by writing its name on your magic notepad – Helicopter! Garlic! Matches! – and placing it into the play area so that it does what you're hoping it will.

The wonder of Scribblenauts is in its vocabulary. The game's developer, 5th Cell, has really pulled off an incredible feat here, stocking their gameworld with many tens of thousands of evocable nouns. If you're like me, you'll probably spend your first few hours with Scribblenauts trying to stump the dictionary, and it's not easy. Medusa, Kraken (I was on a bit of a Clash of the Titans kick), noodles, stadium, muzzle, God, Satan, tornado, all the elements of the Periodic Table, Cthulhu, burqa, wendigo, optician, nerd, fisherman, stilts, garden gnome ... and so on. There aren't many blind spots here, other than nothing is X-rated, no nationalities ("Canadian" was the first thing I typed), and no drugs or alcohol. Just write it down and there it is, with its mass, materials, physical and behavioural properties modelled and interacting with the other objects around it. Super cool.

So, that's fun and new and all ... but how does it play out as a game? Rough, fussy and frustrating, to be honest. The stylus is used to move and manipulate the objects you create, and it's also used to move your character, so you end up with a lot of moving by mistake as you try to say, grab the loose end of a rope.

Overall, play feels floppy and chaotic, barely under control and only vaguely predictable, which is a real drag when you're trying to set up an intricate mechanism – the puzzles are generally quite tight, with success or failure riding on a pixel's edge, so the lack of precision often means multiple retries of even the simplest levels. The problem is further compounded by a very narrow field-of-view with no way to zoom out, and a camera that automatically snaps back to your character whether you want it to or not – you'll set up a fight between, say, an angel and a dinosaur, and miss all the action as the camera zips away.

These are very real flaws, flaws that would doom another game. But even if it's often a pain to actually play, Scribblenauts still comes out far ahead on the balance sheet simply because its core idea is so awesome and audacious, and so much fun when it comes together despite the wiggy play mechanics.

Toronto Star

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