Scribblenauts Impresses Critics 54
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.
A must buy for me (Score:4, Insightful)
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As you can see in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnqbwo3TQvQ [youtube.com]
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Heck maybe finding hilarious ways of NOT solving the puzzle would be part of the metagame
As in one trailer - a cop and a doughnut were created. The puzzle was not solved, but the cop was happy...
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Yeah, it really makes you wish for an on-screen keyboard [youtube.com]...
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Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You're probabally right, it seems more like a sandbox/toy than an actual game.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
or have found one word (jetpack?) that lets you solve all levels.
The review seems to suggest that solving the levels isn't necessarily the hard part. It's solving them in few moves and with interesting strategies. For instance the review says: "awarded me badges -- achievements for clever word usage".
They have probably pre-assigned "novelty" numbers to a variety of words, based both on general frequency of usage, and also the "capability" of the word. I'm guessing that "jetpack" and "robot" and "laser rifle" will have low point values because they are so useful, whereas "treadmill" and "oasis" and "diorama" will have higher values because their usage is less obvious. The game might even keep track of words you use, and give you fewer points for re-used words, as compared to pulling out something totally new. If this is the case, then a given level will actually get more challenging as you keep replaying it, because you'll have eliminated all of the obvious strategies early on.
The thing is this is a puzzle game. The fun comes not from just getting to the end of the game, but in trying to solve puzzles in new and interesting ways.
Of course that may just be my imagination running wild. I'll have to actually play the game to see if they've calibrated all of this in a fun way.
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The review seems to suggest that solving the levels isn't necessarily the hard part. It's solving them in few moves and with interesting strategies. For instance the review says: "awarded me badges -- achievements for clever word usage".
Sound kind of like Crayon physics, in which case I'll buy this game as soon as I can.
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Same here. Crayon Physics was awesome, and watching my 4 year old niece play it was even better.
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Do you think there will be an add-on that gives bonus points for using words that were deliberately excluded from the family version?
Too much freedom (Score:2, Funny)
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They already said that swear words won't be accepted and it's a console game so modifications aren't easy.
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Obama (Score:2)
I hope they add Obama for the final version.
Re:Obama (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think that's what he was trying to do. What you both seem to have missed is that in the video, they wrote in Obama, and were disappointed when nothing happened.
I merely thought it would be cool if an Obama figure turned up. I wasn't even trying to make a joke (and you can see, I'm not modded funny at present)
Sadly no (Score:2)
They forgot to include "Teleprompter"
how many nouns? (Score:2)
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I bet Hitler will be a (in)famous figures that wont be included.
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You mean "trademark", and yes, it is TM'd. (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Could this be THE GAME? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Impressive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Impressive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Impressive? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Self-imposed challenges (Score:3, Informative)
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:Impressive? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 b
Re:Impressive? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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By now, there's probably been more time spent by humanity playing WWII-themed games than fighting the actual war.
Wtf nintendorks? (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry what is this guys problem? Is he saying that whisky [wikipedia.org] isn't a word? What an asshole. Sorry I meant, arsehole.
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I want to play I want to play (Score:3, Funny)
Amazing, but these are even more amazing. (Score:2, Offtopic)
This game is truly an amazing concept, and I don't minimize the difficulty of having such a large set of objects that interact with the game world in a meaningful fashion - indeed, I'd like to see something like this in a PS3 game.
However, I think these 20-Q games [amazon.com] are also amazing: they are a small ball, running off IIRC an AAA battery or two, that plays a pretty good game of 20 questions. I've thought of some pretty weird things and it has gotten it right amazingly often (OK, I'll be fair: if I'm thinking
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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.
Jeremiah Slaczka (Score:2)
A little worried (Score:2)
Their previous DS game, Drawn to Life also had a great premise, you can draw your main character and then draw platforms, and ships, etc. basically you're the game's main artist. That was okay, but the actual gameplay was simply awful and the story was directed at three year olds and bogged the entire game down incredibly.
My full review if you're interested.
http://firsthour.net/beyond-the-first-hour-review/drawn-to-life [firsthour.net]
Anyways, not to be a downer but I hope this game doesn't have a story. Let me just go c
Singh & McKinstry (Score:2)
Oh boy.
So was this is how Open Mind and Mindpixel ended up being implemented? What a shame that neither creator lived to see it.
-FL
Reminds me of concepts from SF (Score:3, Interesting)