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Super Scribblenauts

Score: 98%
ESRB: Everyone 10+
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Developer: 5th Cell
Media: Cartridge/1
Players: 1
Genre: Puzzle/ Editor/ Edutainment


Graphics & Sound:

The graphics in Super Scribblenauts are fairly simple and cartoony, much like the original Scribblenauts. One obvious difference is you can expect to see more polka-dots, stripes and speckled materials (along with other adjectives you might come up with), and colors and effects. The game's ability to recognize adjectives and act on them is quite impressive, but perhaps not quite as impressive as the original game's handle on nouns.

The music is sing-song and the sound effects are simple and cute. There was never a time that I found myself distracted by the game's sounds or distracted by the lack of some sound. The sound and music that are there sort of slip into the background as you focus on the visuals of the puzzle at hand.


Gameplay:

Scribblenauts was a videogame. Super Scribblenauts is a colorful, entertaining, puzzling, cute, challenging, interesting, verbose, unique, fascinating game. That is to say, while the original game allowed for an amazing variety of nouns, Super Scribblenauts adds to that more nouns, as well as the ability to use multiple descriptive adjectives.

There are a wide variety of puzzles to play - some that are totally dependent on adjectives, some that disallow adjectives and require you to determine the correct noun to solve a given problem or match a specified problem. Some puzzles feel like a twist on the "One of these things is not like the other" type skits on Sesame Street, but instead of selecting one thing unlike another, you are asked to "bridge" two existing things by creating a new thing that shares attributes of both. Other puzzles are more like typical platforming levels, with dangerous obstacles to get past, but it's up to you to determine what you need to get past them and write them into existence. Do you make Maxwell able to move really fast so that he can run past the obstacles, or do you create ropes and chains and tie the obstacles up out of your way? There are multiple ways to get past these puzzles, so flex your mind and get to work.

There is a "multiplayer" aspect, of sorts. You can create your own custom levels and then share your custom levels with others using the Wi-Fi functionality of the DS. Then, your friend can play your custom level - single player - on his DS. The only multiplayer aspect is really the sharing aspect.


Difficulty:

The difficulty is handled in an interesting way in Super Scribblenauts. The first time you solve a level, you merely have to find one way to solve it. Depending on your creativity and vocabulary, this may have a varying difficulty right off. However, if you return to the same level to attempt it again, you have to come up with not one, not two, but three ways to solve the problem, none of which can be something you've already done on your first go-round.

As far as simply solving the different puzzles, some are more difficult than others, and sometimes it helps to think more specifically in order to be able to replay a level and still come up with answers. For example, in one puzzle, I used a "flower" the first time I played the puzzle. As I replayed it a few times, I had a hard time finding things I could enter that fit the same criteria, until I realized that I could enter specific types of flowers: tulip, rose, daisy... then I could "reuse" the idea, without reusing the word itself.

There will likely be a puzzle at some point that stumps you. When that happens, think about it for a while, perhaps create a flood or similar to kill everyone on the screen to let the frustration out a bit, then step away from that one for a while. When you return to it later, you might find that you've learned something in a different puzzle that helps you in the difficult one.


Game Mechanics:

While Super Scribblenauts is more knowledgeable than the original game, adjectives are quite a vast and complex field to try to master. The effort is valiant, but the outcome is, somehow, less mystifying than the original game, when such capabilities were unheard of.

Additionally, there were a couple of puzzles that seemed to be geared to a certain solution (or solutions), but not as open-ended as they should be. In one puzzle, you have to cure rats and a girl that all have the plague to protect Maxwell from getting the plague. Well, my robotic nurses had everyone cured up in short order, but I still had to go through the motions of the expected route to a solution. In that puzzle, I ended up getting defeated by the plague after nothing on the screen remained uncured. That sort of thing is a bit frustrating.

All-in-all, Super Scribblenauts is an amazing game, but the license seems to be having a difficult time staying out on the edge of believability. If you like puzzle games, I highly recommend Super Scribblenauts.


-Geck0, GameVortex Communications
AKA Robert Perkins

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