Zero Punctuation: Scribblenauts

[Repulsionary]

I have to admit that I agree with most of Yahtzee's review on this game. As soon as I saw the God vs. Cthulhu video on YouTube, I was psyched to Hell about this coming out, and immediately went out to pre-order this game, and subsequently got a hat two sizes too small for my head.

The most irritating thing in the whole game is the movement, which I'm sorta surprised Yahtzee only complained about once, considering how many times I've been burned/eaten due to it. It's so irritating to FINALLY have the perfect solution to getting the wizard out of the bloody cage when the screen suddenly whips back to your location, and you sprint gleefully into a pond of lava. Or into an orc. Or a dinosaur. I'm sorta surprised he DIDN'T mention the 'screen returning to your location' thing. It's hard to set up your solution when it decides that two seconds is more than long enough to grab the rope, when you've only got like, three pixels worth of width on said object that you can grab.

I admit to using the [insert flight mode here] x rope solution too many times than is healthy. I usually wind up using a roc or a pegasus, or a pterodactyl if there's nothing killable nearby. He's right about there being too much freedom in the game. There's just so many options that I don't know what I should do at any given moment.

Most of my time on the game is spent on the title screen figuring out how many Cthulhus it takes to kill a T-Rex. Or how many Gods it takes to kill a vampire.

I like the game, it's just not as great as I would have hoped.

Edit: I was upset that I couldn't summon Yog-Sothoth, let alone Azathoth.

 

[Callate]

I think I want a t-shirt that says "Anything can be solved with helicopters, boulders, and C'thulu."

 

[uguito-93]

yup hes right when he said he doesn't have much imagination. instead of balancing on the truck he could have made a bull, attached it to the truck via rope and put something red in front of it so the truck would be pulled to safety. And that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Repulsionary]

yup hes right when he said he doesn't have much imagination. instead of balancing on the truck he could have made a bull, attached it to the truck via rope and put something red in front of it so the truck would be pulled to safety. And that's just off the top of my head.

There's that par business, though. Do the puzzle in X amount of items or less, and you get more "ollars." And with those "ollars" you can buy the next world.

Sort of a cheap way of making people have to use their brains, making them buy the next set of puzzles.

 

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

As soon as I saw the God vs. Cthulhu video on YouTube,

Huh, I never tried God before.

As for the game, I enjoyed it for the total 1.5 hours worth of unlocking things. The game does indeed get quite repetitive, and the physics is indeed quite questionable. I had this puzzle where I had to avoid triggering a tripwire that would send my starite to its lava doom. I had everything ready, then I accidentally pressed on empty space, sending my little scribblenaut plummeting to his doom.

And for Cthulhu... There are actually a lot of things that can beat it. I'm surprised Yahtzee only thought about the most 'known' spawn and decided to stick with it throughout the entire game (granted, I stuck with pegasus, chain, wall and kraken throughout mine).

I have however - somehow quite easily - discovered two invincible spawns,

Spoiler

Vampire (with the exception of spawning a sun) and Ooze both cannot die. AT ALL. No matter how much they get hit.

This leads to stupidly easy puzzle solving as you try to avoid some of the more... unpleasant and less known mythos that tend to stand there blocking your way.

Some other interesting crap you can spawn:

Spoiler

Large Hadron Collider
black hole
circus (it has a clown inside)
Werewolf (but for some reason, Full Moon or Moon doesn't trigger its lycanthropic stage. Dude just poofs into a stupid, weak human that can be turned into vampire spawn by the vampire.)
Tsunami
Nuke/armageddon

Yahtzee's still right, though. This game isn't worth buying, but it had some very good concepts and ideas with which it then proceeded to ruin by stuffing up the physics (it's FREAKING HARD trying to use rope in the game! Especially through small spaces)

 

[Lotet]

one aspect of the game I enjoy is how some things react to one another, the werewolves that I summon decide to help their small wolf brethren but will die after having a piece of silver handed to them which turn them into a defenceless office worker in front of the beast. I can create a Sun an it'll extinguish a Vampire and I found the hard way that they take a note from "The Wizard of Oz" where Witch's melt when they come into contact with water

if I ever feel like I don't want to fight the sea monsters I can just drop a toaster into the pool. rescue the little girl from the Zombie hoard by throwing a lasso from atop my pegasus (this is a very manly, not gay pegasus mind you) and have Death himself sort out the whole mess. jump on top of my raptor if I want, get a jet pack or wings for those hard to reach places and stuffing the mice into a stove, that'll fix 'em. even get Liz, one of the game creators (who is a Zombie for some reason) to turn my enemies into more Lizes

there's no point, it's just damn fun, I mean, what was running through you mind when you saw the trailers?

also, while testing which profanities and suggestive words were allowed, "Virgin" gave me a guy with a picture of a game controller on his shirt *snigger*

 

[Repulsionary]

I have however - somehow quite easily - discovered two invincible spawns,

Spoiler

Vampire (with the exception of spawning a sun) and Ooze both cannot die. AT ALL. No matter how much they get hit.

This leads to stupidly easy puzzle solving as you try to avoid some of the more... unpleasant and less known mythos that tend to stand there blocking your way.

Some other interesting crap you can spawn:

Spoiler

Large Hadron Collider
black hole
circus (it has a clown inside)
Werewolf (but for some reason, Full Moon or Moon doesn't trigger its lycanthropic stage. Dude just poofs into a stupid, weak human that can be turned into vampire spawn by the vampire.)
Tsunami
Nuke/armageddon

Yahtzee's still right, though. This game isn't worth buying, but it had some very good concepts and ideas with which it then proceeded to ruin by stuffing up the physics (it's FREAKING HARD trying to use rope in the game! Especially through small spaces)

For the invincible spawns:

Spoiler

You can always call up a clove of garlic or a bottle of holy water and drop it on the vampire's head. They drop into a pile of dust, no joke. It's pathetic. Haven't tried Ooze yet, though. Or is it the same thing as 'Blob'?

As for the other things...

Spoiler

'Science' also gets you a LHC, and messing with it always-ALWAYS-triggers a black hole.
Dragons are afraid of fire, what.
Cthulhu has about as much impact as an enraged dog.
You can type in 'Me' and get an evil twin who is constantly nicking all your stuff and scaring the living daylights out of everyone.
I can't even survive a nuke when I'm in a bomb shelter on the opposite side of the level.
You can summon up a phoenix, not that it does anything.
Hovertanks have a control system that might be equivalent to attempting to pilot a Gundam.

And the rope physics are outrageous. Then again, having twenty individual rope pieces instead of six might cause the DS to explode.

 

[solarsenshi]

I really enjoyed the review, I agree with most of the things brought up by Yahtzee (tried this game myself but got bored after the first 10 levels or so.. and yes I spawned cthulhu).

I'm actually curious to see what Yahtzee's opinion of Phoenix Wright & Elite Beat Agents / Ouendan would be, some of the few games I actually really enjoy on my DS.

 

[144_v1legacy]

Why is everyone saying that DS games are crap?

Some of the best games I've played were on a DS.

Or is this just because it lacks quality graphics?

I have been confused about that as well. I honestly thought everyone in the world owned a DS and loved it. Actually, recently Matt, Yug (Australian Gamer) and Yahtzee (their friend) did a podcast live at GenCon and at one point, Yahtzee asks the audience how many of them have a DS, and to raise two hands if you had two, and pretty much everyone's hand went up.
http://www.australiangamer.com/podcast/175_matt_yug_and_yahtzee_on_the_main_stage_at_genconoz_2009.html
I don't know what rock these "gamers" crawled out from under to think so poorly of the console.

 

[Tonimata]

Cthulu? SEEEERRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSLYYYYYYYY NOW?

OM NOMNOMNOMNOM DELICIOUS MONSTAR

 

[hypothetical fact]

Generic tier list for Creatures in Scribblenauts:

God tier
Witch

Top tier
blob/ooze, vampire

High tier
death

Medium tier
god, devil, cthulhu, robosaurus, dragon, hydra, leviathan, kraken

low tier
shoggoth, behemoth, zombie, tyrannosaurus, soldier

shit tier
everything else

The witch is god tier because it turns anything into a frog at long range, the blob and vampire are high tier because they are invincible, death is high tier because it can kill everything else in a fight, everything in med tier can kill everything else, everything in low tier is good but just has superior alternatives. The soldier is the worst in the lot but it gets bonus points because of the gun it drops.

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

You can spawn cthulu? Count me in!

 

[IrirshTerrorist]

Am I a total idiot for thinking this game might be worth buying... (please don't give a jackass response)

Of course you are. Thinking for yourself is a bad thing.

Ah yes, very true... *wanders off to follow the masses like a good sheep*

 

[Mirroga]

You know, after reading all 6 pages of comments, it's pretty remarkable how few people are willing to think for themselves. Professional criticism is not gospel, even coming from an intelligent and charismatic Australian. It's just a tool to use to help guide you in making your own decisions.

This is the first Zero Punctuation that I absolutely disagree with. Not saying he's wrong; he made several good points and salient arguments. As is true of absolutely everything that has ever existed, "It's not for everyone." He has every right to hate it, just as I have every right to absolutely love it, despite its shitty character movement controls and despite the fact that object interactions don't always work out like you'd expect. I can definitely see how these issues would ruin the experience for a lot of people, but they aren't irritating enough to me to ruin my good time.

I have to say that I don't get the "You can just solve every level with [flying thing], [rope], and [killing machine]" argument. The game's challenge mode is designed specifically to get you out of that rut, and there's always more than one way to solve a level. Of course, there's well more than 3 items in each of those categories so you could just do the same stupid thing 3 times in a row, but that seems to be missing the point. I understand the whole "performance anxiety" thing, and the "dont' fix what isn't broken" angle, and that calling people who don't like the game "uncreative" is an unsatisfying and douchebaggy approach the problem... but I guess Scribblenauts is a game for people who are willing to challenge themselves, instead of expecting the game to do it for them. You could call that lazy game design, and you might be right, but I treat Scribblenauts more like a toy that I occasionally play with rather than a traditional game that I am playing through.

As has been said a couple times before, I'm a little surprised that Yahtzee had absolutely nothing positive whatsoever to say about the game. Even in his review of Mirror's Edge, a game he hated, he at least stated he was glad that it existed, because it was a unique experiment in a sea of mediocre sameness.

I agree with you. Although I do particularly also agree that when a game doesn't have any predetermined storyline or an actual way to solve things, and rather gives you way too much freedom to solve it, I find it lazy at the part of the game (it kinda feels like user-made content in itself). Too much freedom in a game is also a bad thing. I think this freedom in game is the reason why the game is not very appealing to all. Its shallow freedom, and gamers tend to have instincts in being pragmatic as well as being more creative when you don't have the freedom.

 

[cerulgalactus]

I can safely say I am still quite addicted. Especially when my fiance tells me something she tried, and then I have to try it myself.

 

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

For the invincible spawns:

Spoiler

You can always call up a clove of garlic or a bottle of holy water and drop it on the vampire's head. They drop into a pile of dust, no joke. It's pathetic. Haven't tried Ooze yet, though. Or is it the same thing as 'Blob'?

As for the other things...

Spoiler

'Science' also gets you a LHC, and messing with it always-ALWAYS-triggers a black hole.
Dragons are afraid of fire, what.
Cthulhu has about as much impact as an enraged dog.
You can type in 'Me' and get an evil twin who is constantly nicking all your stuff and scaring the living daylights out of everyone.
I can't even survive a nuke when I'm in a bomb shelter on the opposite side of the level.
You can summon up a phoenix, not that it does anything.
Hovertanks have a control system that might be equivalent to attempting to pilot a Gundam.

And the rope physics are outrageous. Then again, having twenty individual rope pieces instead of six might cause the DS to explode.

Spoiler

I double checked with ooze. Lava kills it. If you spawn holy water, garlic and Sun, you can destroy vampires. It doesn't however get rid of anybody/anything they've turned into minions though, but they can be destroyed in the old fashioned sword-to-face method.

And uhmm... yeah to be honest, Cthulhu wasn't that good. It was a very wtf moment when something a fifth of its size could take an elder god down.

 

[Repulsionary]

For the invincible spawns:

Spoiler

You can always call up a clove of garlic or a bottle of holy water and drop it on the vampire's head. They drop into a pile of dust, no joke. It's pathetic. Haven't tried Ooze yet, though. Or is it the same thing as 'Blob'?

As for the other things...

Spoiler

'Science' also gets you a LHC, and messing with it always-ALWAYS-triggers a black hole.
Dragons are afraid of fire, what.
Cthulhu has about as much impact as an enraged dog.
You can type in 'Me' and get an evil twin who is constantly nicking all your stuff and scaring the living daylights out of everyone.
I can't even survive a nuke when I'm in a bomb shelter on the opposite side of the level.
You can summon up a phoenix, not that it does anything.
Hovertanks have a control system that might be equivalent to attempting to pilot a Gundam.

And the rope physics are outrageous. Then again, having twenty individual rope pieces instead of six might cause the DS to explode.

Spoiler

I double checked with ooze. Lava kills it. If you spawn holy water, garlic and Sun, you can destroy vampires. It doesn't however get rid of anybody/anything they've turned into minions though, but they can be destroyed in the old fashioned sword-to-face method.

And uhmm... yeah to be honest, Cthulhu wasn't that good. It was a very wtf moment when something a fifth of its size could take an elder god down.

Spoiler

I nearly cried when I found out that chucking a clove of garlic took down a vampire.

Yeah. Cthulhu would probably be down in the shit tier with everything else. He should at least be MORE powerful than an itty-bitty little dragon.