Hands-On Impressions: Scribblenauts controls can be annoying
I was able to get my review copy of Scribblenauts yesterday. Because of this, I haven’t touched any other game for the past 24 hours. For the most part, I’m impressed because almost everything I input actually works. As you may have heard, you can literally call on God, summon a generic costumed superhero, or ride a time machine just for the heck of it.
During the first few minutes, I was ecstatic. There’s nothing quite like Scribblenauts. I was already having so much fun in the title menu summoning random objects; imagine how brain-melting it would be to play through the actual levels!
Reality then kicked in. You see, Maxwell, the protagonist, can only be controlled using the stylus but his pathfinding is pretty bad. For instance, if you command Maxwell to go to a specific point in the lower part of a level, he’d ignore your input and insist on moving towards the higher section. Maxwell would then get stuck by continuously jumping over an obstacle he can’t get over.
But it’s not just the pathfinding. During another occasion, I gave Maxwell a gun and commanded him to shoot a bee flying in the air. Instead, he shot the flower lying on the ground. The problem: I was supposed to get that flower and put it in a box somewhere. Oh, and it wasn’t a fluke. Maxwell continues to shoot the flower in several of my replays.
These control flaws cause so many unnecessary deaths/failures. The worst part—they aren’t infrequent problems. Maxwell acts up more often than not when tackling the game’s more complex puzzles.
Make no mistake—the control problem doesn’t make Scribblenauts unplayable. The game is still a lot of fun to play, but it can sure get frustrating in some stretches. Stay tuned for a review in Daily Nintendo.
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