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.

Wtf nintendorks?

[ZERO1ZERO]

Before I started, I watched a douchey businessman type in "whisky" [sic] which, of course, is a misspelling of what he wanted. Instead, he got the "whisky carriage", which is absolutely incredible. Of course, the idiot business dude thought the game was wrong when it presented him with a charming gauche carriage but it was HE who was wrong so what an idiot, am I right or am I right.

Sorry what is this guys problem? Is he saying that whisky [wikipedia.org] isn't a word? What an asshole. Sorry I meant, arsehole.

Re:Could this be THE GAME?

[KDR_11k]

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.

Re:Impressive?

[xeoron]

True.... There is also a wonderfully wacky aspect to it as well, which one reviewer of the game at E3 talked about, here [neogaf.com], which is this:

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.

You mean "trademark", and yes, it is TM'd.

[tepples]

You can't copyright a name. But I found over 20 live trademark registrations at USPTO.gov for "CHUCK NORRIS", "CHUCK NORRIS FACTS", "CHUCK NORRIS IS THE FACT", and "CHUCK NORRIS APPROVED". Unfortunately, USPTO.gov's TESS search engine does not give out persistent links to search result pages, but individual results from TARR are persistent. These include CHUCK NORRIS APPROVED nutritional supplements, martial arts clothing, and action figures [uspto.gov]; CHUCK NORRIS T-shirts [uspto.gov], and CHUCK NORRIS FACTS mousepads [uspto.gov].

Self-imposed challenges

[tepples]

I hope this game is as cool as it sounds, but I have one major concern - balance.

Lack of balance has never stopped other sandbox games like Animal Crossing, which really is that easy [pineight.com]. If they make Scribblenauts too easy, players will create self-imposed challenges [tvtropes.org]: "Try to beat level X of Scribblenauts with only words meeting criteria Y and Z."

It's one thing to balance 20 races in a game

In some fans' minds, NASCAR has failed to balance even two of its highest profile races: Daytona and Talladega have become bumper cars. Or did you mean something else?

Re:Amazing, but these are even more amazing.

[The_mad_linguist]

It's not actually that difficult a problem once you have the database. And they built the database partially with crowdsourcing on their online site - 20q.net.