As you may know already, we’ve visited Nintendo this week and now have a great deal of content to give to you. We’re trickling some hands-on reports throughout the week (news is a bit average this week to be honest) for your reading pleasure. Now, let’s talk about something that’s dear to all our hearts: Super Scribblenauts. Sat alone at its own DSi XL unit at the Nintendo event like a forgotten GameBoy, Super Scribblenauts quietly got on with basking in its glory.
You see, there’s something quite obvious with this game that should’ve got you excited. It has “Scribblenauts” in the title. The predecessor was an entertaining journey through our inner psyche via our imaginations, a complete “err why hasn’t this been done before” game made of win. If you need a brief recap, here it is: you control Maxwell, a dude who can summon cool stuff to help him with puzzles thanks to a fancy dictionary. You type in the word, it comes to life. Bingo. The sequel is the same really. Whilst there hasn’t been many gameplay tweaks aside from some actually useful controls (the original was a bit fiddly; this has d-pad and face button support), the stuff on offer here is compelling.
The game now supports adjectives (cleverly alluded to by the title); ten thousand of them to be exact. On top of that, there are some new words to muck about with. We didn’t come across many in the brief demo we experienced (our imaginations were drained by a long train journey), but adjectives definitely add a bit extra to the game. You can now spawn things like a “Firey Vampire” and a “Wet Computer”, amongst others. It adds an extra dimension to the gameplay, even if some of them are mainly aesthetic effects stuck on to pre-existing sprites. Things such as robot dinosaurs are still included, as are wings to go with it so the old-school crowd should still be happy.
We only had time to play one puzzle level, and down to peer pressure I ended up electrifying a Platypus with a toaster. Don’t ask. Early puzzles seemed to be a bit complex compared to the original, so we hope youngsters will be brainy enough to get it done. There was a new hint system though, and it should help out younger folk if they can afford it. Basically, the game will sell you information (for in-game currency), with the cost decreasing over time (shown on-screen by a handy hourglass). Joe couldn’t resist the age-old favourite of “Nuke”. Next time, we’ll be sure to try “Mega Nuke” and the surely most ultimate prize of them all: “Invisible Nuke”.
