Super Scribblenauts

Rating: E

Score: 9.5/10

Every day, every minute of every hour, we process information and manage it accordingly. Few games tap into this deep psychological thinking, but one year ago Scribblenauts tried very hard to do just that. Fun, and based on thinking rather than being lead around to shoot/kill things, it offered a breath of fresh air at the time, but suffered from limitations (which it almost made up for in the sheer number of amazing "I can spawn that?!?" moments). A year later, and a game later, and expectations rise. Does Super Scribblenauts deliver? This game is only available for the Nintendo DS.

What is Scribblenauts? Scribblenauts is a game built around using your creative abilities to overcome obstacles, the catch being there are three dictionaries worth of words included in the game. Failure was not simply "cheap shots" or "lucky breaks"; it was you versus the system, brain vs brain. It didn't have a few things, other than the obvious copyrighted (mostly copyrighted) material, no alcohol, obscenities, or drugs-related objects. Every other word that exists (or just about- you'd be hard-pressed to prove otherwise) gets crammed in.

One thing that Super Scribblenauts has over its predecessor is the addition of adjectives. An adjective describes a noun. Awesome? Oh yes it is. Mythical gods, cars, guns, scientific breakthroughs, people, and otherwise aren't limited to a single color, or by their preset features in the slightest with the correct adjectives. The mythical god Kraken, for example, can be described as a "Rideable Rainbow Obese Flying Magic Huge Flaming Gentlemanly Kraken" and you can only picture the creature that spawns. It's a huge, rainbow, slightly chubby, flaming serpent with a top hat and monocle who flies around and shoots items and you have the option to ride this monster around. I mean, that's satisfying to your ego.

Other than being completely dazzled by the addition of adjectives, the "story" hasn't improved, i.e. there's still a lack thereof. The main game is just multiple challenges; you must gingerly choose words (and sometimes adjectives are mandatory as well) to complete some random objective. It starts off easy, and quickly gets pretty mind-blowing. It might not even be so bad if you didn't know you're only limited by your brain's creative ability along with the ability to assess the situation at hand. Even with all that, it's not a terribly long game.

Most of the challenges demand just any object of fitting characteristics, so you bypass the need for a single object with a really complex adjective-filled super-object of completely unrelated (but fitting) proportions, characteristics, etc.. Your ability to use adjectives will be tested during adjective stages, where the game gives you a handful of completely unrelated objects and tells you to create one single object relating the features of all those objects, usually needing a friend or two to make fitting adjectives. It starts off as just adding related adjectives to some object, but gets really tricky.

The main mode you'll probably spend all of your time in is the title screen, offering (as in the last game) a large space to unleash creativity, and most importantly to test the system. This time, you got a lot more system to test, and it becomes a brain fest (the more people to help, the better it gets). Even if there's some disappointing moments where an adjective you strongly believe should exist doesn't ("blood-sucking" was one of mine), you have to realize there's a million to balance that out (zombie is an adjective, REALLY?). Even at best, you feel like you're only jogging the system, who almost enjoys you inputting too many adjectives to count and some completely random object most people don't even realize exist (more Cthulu, anyone? How about Longcat?). In fact, it keeps tally of ALL your adjectives (up to 40-50ish, which if you can even collect that many, you should be proud, champ).

If you never played the original Scribblenauts, the addition of adjectives probably means little. Most people who were fortunate enough to play the original would know it was crushing to not have a long enough ladder, or a rock that was too small, or whatever silly nonsense that having adjectives would've fixed. Along with that, you can make much better objects with adjectives (refer back to my Kraken description, which is most definitely more awesome than a normal variation). It offers more freedom in a game based around freedom.

Perhaps there’s not the polished quality of a lot of Game Of The Year games, but it offers something unique and fresh: a relaxed game where your cranium is the player. Thinking rather than shooting or adventuring in some tedious way is such a new approach, and in the end delivers a much more satisfying game. It's good to pick up a fun educational (kind of) game for once.