Scribblenauts The much-hyped Scribblenauts is to gaming what Apple is to technology - as in, it's a completely new concept that provides a breath of fresh air for the Nintendo DS. The concept is simple, yet mind-boggling in its ambition. You can activate whatever item you want, whenever you want in order to complete the set objective. The possible pitfall for this is obvious - how can a game do this yet maintain a degree of sensibility? Remarkably, Scribblenauts DOES by and large do very well in containing a ludicrously ambitious concept to the point where the game is still playable. Not just playable, it's re-playable due to the various options you can choose to complete levels. In fact, it isn't the magnitude of options that flaws the game, but something very simple - and that is the sad fact that Scribblenauts features some of the worst controlling systems yet seen on the Nintendo DS. Controlling your character and making them interact with the created items in-game is nothing short of complete trial and error, where the player will often get blocked behind objects, fail to interact completely or do something else entirely. This isn't helped by the games graphics which are deliberately basic (how much can you fit in one Nintendo DS game? The fact this has been done on the DS at all is astonishing!) The slipshod graphics mean that terrain problems are more evident than they would have been on a bigger platform. Helicopters, ninja swords, panda bears... pretty much everything within reason is possible in Scribblenauts. To summarise, Scribblenauts is by no means a bad game, but it isn't the revolutionary DS defining title that the hype made it out to be. It's legacy will be in providing inspiration for future titles rather than one made on its own. If this game was taken and ported onto a Playstation 3 with the control problems removed, it could very well be one of the best titles ever. As it stands, given how good it was expected to be, Scribblenauts goes down as a failure. But a valiant attempt nonetheless. RATING: 6/10 - Brilliant concept is destroyed by cumbersome controls.
An awful lot of the things that you have pointed out seem to be the generic problems covered by almost every other reviewer, which is fine, but you could have personalised it a lot more by offering instances of things that you experienced in your play through and offered commentary on them. There also isn't enough detail and much of the descriptions of aspects that you found fault with are strangely worded/phrased. It is also very difficult to tell what you think of the game until you declare it a failure at the end; but because you haven't given enough detail on what's good and bad about it, it doesn't seem that declaring it a failure is merited. Despite the fact that you've declared it a failure that it failed to live up to hype (i personally don't think a reviewer should take hype into consideration in a review) you still gave it 6/10. I'm really confused as to how it gained a six when you only have very vague good things to say about it and far more slightly less vague bad things; i expected a lower score... Just some constructive criticism, please don't be perturbed by it; it's great that you've made a contribution.
That's completely fair I noticed after posting it that others had reviewed this game and this was poor in comparison - so I'll up the quality next time!
this game is one of the best games outhere so good i lasted a month playing it and still wanted more igive it 9/10 the controls arnet that bad anyway
The controls are bad enough for me to get really frustrated and risk breaking a DS over it. Controls are essential to good gameplay and no matter how great the story is, or how novel the idea, if it is marred by shitty controls, it's almost not worth playing. We have a frickin' D-pad. Use that for movement...use the touchscreen for moving objects. As noted in another review of this game, you'll most likely "miss" an object and send the character off to his doom as he walks to the point that you inadvertently clicked. Onto the critique. Like mark was saying, your position isn't really one way or the other until the very end. State your position, good or bad, near the beginning so we know roughly where you stand. Also, you're missing most of the Rating components that we use, along with logical explanations as to why the scores are the way they are. And like mark said, not enough detail. Lots of opinionated points, but no explanations...
