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Scribblenauts Impresses Critics
Despite all the announcements for popular, big-budget game franchises at this year's E3, one of the most talked-about titles is a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS called Scribblenauts. In a hands-on preview, Joystiq described it thus: "The premise of the game is simple — you play as Maxwell, who must solve various puzzles to obtain Starites spread across 220 different levels. To execute the aforementioned solving, you write words to create objects in the world that your cartoonish hero can interact with. It's a simple concept that's bolstered by one astounding accomplishment from developer 5th Cell: Anything you can think of is in this game. (Yes, that. Yes, that too.)" They even presented it with a test of 10 words they wouldn't expect it to know or be able to represent, including lutefisk, stanchion, air, and internet, and the game passed with flying colors. The game will also allow players to edit and share levels. A trailer is available on the Scribblenauts website, and actual gameplay footage is posted at Nintendorks.
I'm surprised how little attention this received during E3. I'll definitely be ordering this if only to use it to prove you can solve all problems with poo.
The gameplay footage was really quite interesting, but I'd give good odds that within a week of release people will have identified thousands of common words that don't work with it, or have found one word (jetpack?) that lets you solve all levels.
If I'm wrong, though, it could be amazing.
Supposedly attributes like "with lasers" aren't allowed, the example they gave was a burning zombie elephant, you can't get that. You can, however, summon an elephant, a zombie and a torch and try to combine those. If you want a shark with a laser you have to summon both parts and try attaching the laser to the shark without getting eaten.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You don't get it, the game isn't impressive because it's a puzzle game, but because it's a whole new idea that seems impossible to implement, but apparently works pretty well.
"Allah"
World of goo is very fun and might have the same very basic premise, I wouldn't say this is anything like that. World of goo is about taking one known set of tools and using them over and over to get around physics. Scribblenauts is about trying to take anything to solve a problem.
But even if you could say Scribblenauts is exactly like World of goo, I say it's nice to have a few similar games for people, who like those games, to purchase and a clone of World of Goo is definitely better than yet another WWII shooter or yet another street racing game.
I was in the early levels; I didn't quite have an idea of how ridiculously in-depth the database was. I was summoning things like ladders, glasses of water, rayguns, what have you. But I reached a level with zombie robots, and the zombie robots kept killing me. Rayguns didn't work, a torch didn't work, a pick-axe didn't work. In my frustration, I wrote in "Time Machine". And one popped up. What the f!%k? A smile dawned on my face. I hopped in, and the option was given to me to either travel to the past or the future. I chose past. When I hopped out, there were f!%king dinosaurs walking around. I clicked one, and realized I could RIDE THEM. So I hopped on a f!%ing DINOSAUR, traveled back to the present, and stomped the shit out of robot zombies. Did you just read that sentence? Did you really? I F!%KING TRAVELED THROUGH TIME AND JUMPED ON A DINOSAUR AND USED IT TO KILL MOTHERF!%KING ROBOT ZOMBIES. This game is unbelievable. Impossible. There's nothing you can't do.
That'd be a cheat since he'd solve all problems. Right?
AFAIK the real challenge of the game is not to get to the end but to find as many different ways as you can for solving a puzzle.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I read an interview about this game I think almost a year ago, and was pretty impressed with the scope. They went through Dictionaries and Encyclopedias to create an enormous object database. There are a lot of nouns in the English language.
To list them all and give them a single attribute is quite a lot. To make them recognisable, animated, and to allow your character to interact with them is huge. To then define the way in which they also interact with one another is incredible. The parameters needed to be defined for this is almost astronomical.
Create an item. Can it be used by a human? An animal? In what ways? Can it be broken, climbed on, burnt, eaten, cut, fired, shattered, melted, driven, flown, guided? Some items may be able to modify it, some may not. Some in ways different than others. In what ways will this then change its appearance, function, interaction, etc.
On a side note... It would be nice to see such a database shared among developers. It seems like a lot of time is wasted in games recreating the same types of objects and interactions.
It is very much a sandbox game. Like many have said, though, the focus is not only getting the item, but how fast you can do it, how few items you can do it with, in how many different ways you can do it, etc.
I was impressed with the idea when first learning of it, but wasn't sure how well it could turn out. Fun, but very basic and limited, I thought. I'm amazed how well it has come out. I haven't bought a game in years, and rarely pay full price for a game, or buy them new... but this one seems to be getting more and more interesting. I'm really looking forward to see how this turns out.