Scribble Me This…

LiveJournal Tags: Scribblenauts

I’ve been playing Scribblenauts for the DS for about a week now, and finished the game yesterday, so it’s time to reflect.
Scribblenauts is more significant as a gaming mechanic than the game itself. In order to play, you must summon objects by writing them down with the DS stylus, or entering them in manually on a keyboard screen. If the game can produce the desired object, it’ll appear on screen. There’s over 22,000 working words, so there’s quite the variety. Of this selection, about 100 words or so will actually be useful to gameplay.
As you’re picking and choosing your own weapons, gameplay will vary vastly from player to player based on their imagination. Thus comparing notes is quite interesting.
In my experience, the most useful objects are: ropes, chains, wings, fan, water, jetpacks, air vents, large air vents, flamethrowers, rayguns, dragons, Cthulu, walls, chainsaws, and bridge ladders. Bridge ladders are especially useful. Almost every one of the 200 levels involves clearing a pit. Obviously, the easiest way to transgress this is with a bridge. Writing, “Bridge,” will provide one, but it’s too short by far. A bridge ladder is the perfect size for most pits. Only, if you try to cross and bump the edge, the whole bridge will move, and possibly fall off the edge into the pit. There’s also multiple meanings for some words, so if you don’t pay attention to the definition menu, you’ll get “Fan: a person,” instead of “Fan: a tool.” The fan was especially useful with moving objects without going near them and alerting monsters.
As for levels where you’re charged with killing multiple enemies, you can summon a gun. A gun’s only good for three shots if you’re lucky. A ray gun has a one-hit-kill ratio for most enemies, but will still only last you those few shots. A melee weapon like a chainsaw will last you longer. Or you can avoid doing any dirty work on your own by summoning a monster on your own. Big monsters like dragons, or Cthulu work best. You set them loose, moving them from place to place with they stylus then discard them after to avoid being killed by them yourself. Other monster like Ghosts and Death work well. Vampires and zombies will only create more vampires and zombies, or vampire zombies, so are best avoided. But: if everyone’s a vampire, you can bring out the sun and dust them. There’s also even more obscure monsters like the Mothman and the Jersey Devil to summon. Worst still in terms of monster extinction are Armageddon level weapons like Nukes, or floods. For underwater monsters, or obstacles, a depthcharge automatically detonates on impact. You just have to place it above their heads and let go, whereas with bombs, dynamite you have to physically walk up to and charge, and grenades you have to throw.
A few levels are confusing with their rules. There will be people you can kill, or must kill, and people you can’t. Some objects just won’t work, and some work too easily. A bee will sting you if you walk by, but you can summon a wasp to kill that bee, but then the wasp won’t sting you. Did it lose it’s stinger? You can blow through most levels in ten seconds, or spend ten minutes. Controls can be sticky too. Everything is done with the stylus on screen aside from looking around, so you can accidentally jump out of the helicopter you’re tying to fly, killing you instantly. There’s also a lot of weird “fails,” where you’ll die or lose for no apparent reason. Usually it’ll be because you destroyed or misplaced an object you weren’t supposed to .

Technorati Tags: Scribblenauts

Since there’s over 22,000 words, and combos you can use, there’s infinite replayability. Also. you can pit monsters against each other to see who’ll win. A vampire can apparently kill a werewolf no problem, so Underworld was a lie.