Drawn to Life: Spongebob Squarepants
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: THQ Developer: Altron Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Platformer/ Platformer (2D)/ Editor
Graphics & Sound: Many times in the past, we've seen platforming titles fall on their collective faces, especially those aimed at a younger audience. The reason hasn't always been that these games were broken or that they completely failed to introduce new mechanics and fresh ideas. In most cases we just weren't attached, out of sheer boredom. Boredom often comes as a direct result of how games fail to engage us through graphics and sound. In the case of Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition, we see the ultimate anti-boredom tactic: user-generated content. Editors were about the best we had before Drawn To Life hit the scene. That game's formula for creating art that was incorporated into the main game solved one of the biggest issues with editors. It is easy to give someone a sandbox and let them build a level, but harder to make a level anyone wants to play. We have all gained a great deal of respect for level designers through the process of fiddling with levels in an editor. The brilliance of a hybrid like Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition is in leaving level design to the experts while still allowing players to customize most everything else not bolted down. There shouldn't be any positive impact on playability from drawing your own enemies, characters, power-ups, and incidental items. Nothing fundamental has changed about the level or the game's physics, but players immediately have a greater investment in the game and are willing to overlook a lot that normally would not pass muster. The music and sound effects in Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition aren't customizable in the same way as the visuals, but there is the option to replay music through a boom-box in your "base of operations." Of course, you get to draw your own house and boom-box... There is a lot of theme music within the game, changing at every stage and during special sections. There are some cut-scenes that tell the story of 'Bob and his friends working through a bad time in Bikini Bottom, but the majority of the action unfolds at street level with non-stop platforming. The characters and items you draw mesh nicely into the background thanks to an art style in the game that doesn't look overproduced or polished.
Gameplay: Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition follows basic platforming conventions, without a great deal of innovation. The element of DIY (Draw It Yourself) is a neat feature, but doesn't change the way you progress through the game. The story begins when Patrick finds a set of pencils dropped from far above Bikini Bottom. He, not surprisingly, seizes the opportunity to make a monumental mistake by sketching a DoodleBob, which proceeds to grab the remaining pencil and wreak havoc. It's up to you to take the pencil away from Patrick and exterminate the threat to Bikini Bottom and its denizens. As you proceed into the first level, you'll feel right at home with butt-bouncing, smashing crates, collecting power-ups, and even a little "mine cart" action... The difference comes when you see blank spaces (really outlines of items) in various parts of the level. An easel will be situated nearby, and you'll be asked to draw something useful. The drawing part is required to progress in the level, but you can be fairly creative about what you draw. You figure out along the way that some drawing styles work better than others. It is even possible to redraw enemies, as they will transform rather than just disappear as you defeat them. The first thing you'll draw is the main character, and you'll have several models for reference. It would have been an improvement to have this "reference model" concept continued through the game, so players with less artistic ability could trace from an existing figure. The magic pencil concept continues into the game's levels, as you attempt to reverse graffiti damage left by DoodleBob. The graffiti spawns enemies, so you have to work fast to erase it. Juggling the pencil/stylus in these enemy battles wasn't all that intuitive, or at least involved a learning curve. The multiplayer option for the game is fairly basic and not nearly as fleshed out as it could have been. The Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition concept is really built on platforming first, with the user-generated content as an aside. There are some great preparatory stages separate from the main story that will help you grasp the drawing tools in the game, almost like a training mode. Beyond playing solo through the regular campaign, you can also fire up a coloring book from the main menu that allows for endless sketching. Within the game's solo campaign, the Bikini Bottom location serves as a safe hub and includes some free-form sketching options also. Folks within town will occasionally give you side missions that require drawings, a feature that should have been expanded to make Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition more than just a creative Platformer.
Difficulty: Some people will find the drawing requirement makes this a frustrating experience, especially folks like me that obsess over getting everything "just so." You aren't penalized in Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition or judged for your art style, and there is a hint delivered in one of the loading screens along the lines of how you don't have to draw what the game tells you to draw. The drawing is easier and much more enjoyable once you give up the notion of making some perfect work-of-art. The platforming experience has its quirks, especially considering the demands of holding the stylus at the same time as you move around using most of the buttons on the DS. The enemy skirmishes would have been much better if the stylus could have served as a main offensive weapon, rather than the face buttons. Jumping and punching while running around and scribbling with the stylus is probably one mechanic too many. You'll learn to manage the stylus chopstick-style, between two fingers, while navigating the face buttons in order to get things accomplished, but there is a learning curve. Working through the various levels here won't hold any great surprise or frustration for people that have played their share of platforming titles. The element that really raises Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition above the cut is the ability to use user-generated content to mediate the boredom that sets in after too much butt-bouncing.
Game Mechanics: The editor featured in Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition bears every resemblance to that in the original Drawn To Life, with the notable absence of the stamping tool. This isn't a huge problem, since there are subtle improvements in this edition to the color palette. There are a variety of add-ons available to your toolset as you move through the game collecting treasure, such as new colors. This editor is such a central feature of the game that your take on it (like/dislike) will color everything else. The platforming action has been better and worse than what appears here, but there's no avoiding the editor. As mentioned earlier, it would have been nice to see more tools embedded in the game for younger gamers to quickly stamp or trace objects they want, rather than just start with a blank slate. The outline of each item appears as you start drawing, which helps guide your hand. The learning point on these outlines is that they have everything to do with how the finished product will interact in the real game. If you draw a car that only takes up 1/3 of the allotted space, you'll find your character riding on empty space. If you only draw half of an object that you need to jump on, you'll have a more difficult time measuring and executing jumps. It's interesting how Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition opens up a kind of partnership between the gamer and the developer, in that a poorly drawn object may result in an inferior game experience. Most everyone signing up for the experience will recognize this, but there's something really novel and fun about feeling that you are collaborating during the game. More collaboration in a multiplayer setting through the full game, rather than the multiplayer sandbox provided here, would really take things to another level. The other area for improvement would be Wi-Fi to allow upload and download of content created by other users. At the heart of Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition is a decent platforming game, improved greatly by this creative play mechanic, so it would also help to have the best possible Platformer. Drawn To Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition isn't the best platforming experience you'll have on DS, but it is one of the more creative games to hit the platform and a very unique experience.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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