drawn to life

Why I'm so excited for Scribblenauts, when Drawn to Life was so bad

Scribblenauts Cover

Over a year ago, I reviewed 5TH Cell's first Nintendo DS game, Drawn to Life. I hated it. It featured a crappy story piled on to a crappy platformer and topped off with the most laugh-out-loud ridiculous ending I've seen since Giga Wing 2. So why am I so excited for 5TH Cell's latest? Because it seems like everything Drawn to Life was not.

That game would be Scribblenauts. You've probably heard of it by now since the post E3 media blitz has thrown every award possible at this game. Of course, someone like me isn't allowed into E3, so I can simply just imagine how to play this game. But from videos I've seen and articles I've read, it would appear that 5TH Cell is on the right track. No story, little to no platforming, and no corny musical ending (well, that could still happen for all I know).

2008 Game of the Year Awards

Game of the Year Awards logoAnnouncing the 2008 Game of the Year Awards from the First Hour! I beat 16 games this year, check out which ones are named the Game of the Year, Older Game of the Year, and a few others! New this year are the Worst Games of the Year.

Drawn to Life

Drawn to Life CoverDrawn to Life is a Nintendo DS game that takes platformers a step forward by allowing you to draw your own character among many other objects throughout the game. It also takes platformers two steps back with its awful gameplay. Before I rip into the game though, let's take a look at the product as a whole. Drawn to Life was released in September of last year and really advertised itself as a game that would allow for so much more creativity in a genre rather lacking lately. The game is targeted for children, but I'll brave anything if it interests me, and Drawn to Life definitely did.

Anyways, awful is a rather strong word but while I'm playing a game, I'm constantly thinking about its current overall score and how it's doing in the individual categories. Drawn to Life started at around a seven (a nice number, giving the game the benefit of the doubt that it is above average), drawing your own character was kind of cool, and I put a lot of work into it because I knew I'd be staring at "me" for the next few hours. Then the real game starts, and we're faced with an empty village and a whole bunch of villagers to rescue. This got me really excited because last year I played Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, a truly stellar title that also focused on expanding a town and opening up new things as the game progresses. So I might have bumped up Drawn to Life to an eight at that point for its potential. However, the first platforming stage begins, and I was instantly able to recognize that this game is going to be painful, I'll get more into this during the gameplay portion. Between platforming levels, you wander around town doing other painfully boring stuff, more on this below during my story review. Overall, it's a constant back and forth between crap gameplay and crap story, ending in my biggest "WTF?" moment of the year.

Enough of this, straight to the scores out of 10.

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