Scribblenauts: Hands On

NZGamer recently got a taste of the most anticpitated titles this year from the likes of Sega, UbiSoft, THQ and Warner Bros. at local distributor Monaco's E3 Night in Auckland.

That my pick o' the bunch from Monaco E3 Night is Scribblenauts says a few things. 1. I'm a hopeless DS fanboy. 2. I'm a sucker for pure, inspired innovation. 3. I agree with all the journos who saw this wee gem at E3 in LA - including Lucy, who wrote this game up for NZGamer then. I'll try not to rehash too much, and for those of you just catching up now, welcome to the wonder! Before you read any further, check out the list of accolades on the Scribblenauts website.

See? See? This game is amazing. That's why it won best in show against monster titles for the PS3 and Xbox 360. This - a little DS title from the cats at 5th Cell and riding the sparkling gold wave created for it by Warner Brothers Interactive. I was lucky enough to spend some quality hands-on time with this title a few days ago, watched over by Joel from Warner Brothers Interactive in Australia. He took me through a few of the game's basics and then left me to it. I was hooked. Just like everyone else who has played this massively addictive and preposterously free-roaming game.

With a term like "free-roaming" I might refer to the game's development: rumours flying around that guys at 5th Cell spent a year working through the dictionary to include every object they could find among the TENS OF THOUSANDS you can conjure appear to be based in fact. Or, I could refer to the way it's played. The tagline is unlock your imagination. I unlocked mine and never looked back. Actually - it was sort of a scary space.

Maxwell needs to get a "Starite" from each level. People: that's just star with 'ite' on the end. Who knows why? Who cares? While the name of the treasure might be a bit trite, the means by which you must obtain it is not. You have access, in Scribblenauts, to a keypad into which you can type the name of any object you care to imagine. The best way to describe it, I suppose, is with the examples given to me by Warner Brothers, and the variations I came up with myself. So - the Starite is in a tree. How do you want to get it down?

Type chainsaw. A chainsaw will appear - POP! Give it to Maxwell. Touch the tree with the stylus. It comes crashing down.
Type battering ram. A battering ram will appear - POP! Sit Maxwell atop it. Touch the tree. The battering ram will smash it over.
Type flamethrower - burn it.
Type kangaroo - leap to grab it (whoops, this one didn't work).
Type lasso - cowboy that thing down
Grappling hook.
Dynamite... are you getting the idea?

Some pundits have misquoted the developers and publishers in saying - quite unabashedly and still rather impressively - this game has over 10,000 objects which you can conjure to use in each of the levels, to navigate its obstacles and collect the Starite, or to complete tasks. While this is technically true, what the PR guys want out there is this: TENS of thousands (just as I wrote in ostentatious caps above).

I tried to come up with something that wasn't in there, and I didn't manage to do it. The closest I came was 'fly spray' and that's only because that object is labelled with the American, 'bug spray'. Barring a few language barriers, the fact that the game contains no profanity and no trademarks, I challenge anyone to come up with something that hasn't been included in some form. The dictionary is a big, sturdy book, right? There's a reason it gets used to prop up the low end of couches.



There are 220 levels included, in which you will be able to interact with these objects, and in which the objects will interact with each other. Based on what I had heard around and about, I tried the combo of Cat and Dog, to see what would happen. One was okay on its own. The second they were both on the screen, Maxwell had a scrap on his hands. You want a game with replayability? I can honestly say I have never come across anything with quite the scope this does.

So, the handwriting recognition software is average at best (I suppose this is where they put the Scribble in Scribblenauts - but Tapnauts just doesn't have the same ring to it) and I found the odd time where clearing the screen of stacked up, useless objects got frustrating, as the controls for Maxwell, the objects, and interacting with the environment are all the same, causing confusion if you get the stylus-tap even slightly wrong. But forgivable? Forget it. In a game this good, they don't even feature.

When I arrived at the RVB event, there was no one playing Scribblenauts, and four very lonesome DS consoles, so I took the opportunity to have a second sit-down with it. Word got around and just like at the big E3, by the end of the night you couldn't get near it. The game is out in September, so expect our full review around then. We ought to look at Scribblenauts with an extremely critical eye, otherwise it will be far too easy to gush about, and who wants that from their impartial and independent videogame media?

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