The Charge:
Write anything, solve anything.

Opening Statement:
Rumored, whispered about, discussed and debated—rarely does a Nintendo DS game see so much speculation. Enter Scribblenauts, developed by 5th Cell, winner of “Best of Show” at E3 2009, the first portable game ever to do so. From its earliest teaser trailers and first-hand reports, people knew this was going to be something significant, a game with endless possibilities and creative applications.

Well, kinda. Now that the game is in hand, hindsight tells us it was almost impossible for it to live up to everyone’s expectations. In many ways, Scribblenauts is exactly as advertised—you can write anything into it, and it appears. The possibilities and combinations of items are seriously impressive, and you will be stunned at how much time and energy has gone into predicting every weird object you could possibly think to conjure. On the other hand, something had to give… and where things go tepid are the gameplay elements.

Facts of the Case:
You are Maxwell, and your job is to collect “Starites” – little sparkling star items. Why? Who cares? What matters in the world of Scribblenauts is what you can do. You have a notepad, and in it, anything you write comes to life, magically, instantly. With over ten themed environments and 220 levels to play in, the possibilities are endless. There are thousands of ways to solve a single puzzle, based only on your creativity. They call it “emergent gameplay”. You’ll call it fun.

Panda, crown, motorcycle... check!

The Evidence:
Scribblenauts is fun, seriously fun. This f-word is one you will see me using a lot in this review, because it is absolutely the simplest and most succinct way to describe this Nintendo DS game. Fun! You’ve never really played a game quite like this before. It is cutting edge, new and exciting. The game itself is a construct, the barest objectives established—Maxwell needs to get the Starite on each level to proceed. You can play any level in any order, or solve it any way you want. You can go back and repeat levels, and are rewarded for coming up with new solutions. You are given points (currency) for how quick you solve a problem, for how few items you need to conjure, and for how “creative” a solution you come up with. If a Starite is in a tree, summoning a ladder will give you the most rudimentary of scores… but summoning a dinosaur, a fishing pole, a rope and a piece of meat, then attaching the meat to the rope, to the pole, sitting on the dinosaur, and riding it to the tree will score big points. That is, if the dinosaur doesn’t try and eat you first. Either way, there’s no penalty for failure! You get infinite attempts.

There are limits, of course. Scribblenauts boasts a word list of over 22,000 entries, but there are restrictions on what can be summoned. You can’t pull up trademarked items, or profane or sexual items, things like that. “Taser” is a no-no, but “stun gun” works fine. Descriptive modifiers on items may or may not work, like colors. “White bear” may not work as expected, but “polar bear” would. With a bit of trial-and-error, you should find very little you are unable to summon. Internet memes, forces of nature, large hadron colliders, Cthulu—you name it, it’s in here. Some objects don’t always make sense, but they usually come back with something—I tried to summon a “miner” to dig a hole for me, but I ended up with a Viking. No idea why. If the game does not recognize your spelling (entered via keyboard or by quirky handwriting recognition) it will suggest closest matches. There are also limits to how many summoned items you can have in play on any given level (no doubt a restriction of the DS system) which the game will alert you to via a thermostat-like bar. You can always drag items into the trash can when you’re done with them, or when you want to try something else. Recycling is a must!

The sunglasses are a must.

Did I mention this was fun? It really, really is. You pick up Scribblenauts, and can be playing within seconds. No complicated storyline, no annoying restrictions—just play the level you want. New stages and avatar-appearances can be purchased via the currency (Ollars) but I found I was rolling in the stuff and could unlock almost all the levels within twenty minutes of game play. The failures of solving missions can often be as fun as the solutions—like summoning criminals to distract the police officers guarding the Starite in a museum-like setting, only to have the police officer kill the criminal, then move onto Maxwell. Whoops. Get a few people you know playing, and expect to spend a lot of time regaling each other with the spectacular and quirky failures and successes of each level.

And here’s where the game gets into a bit of trouble. The game elements are so open-ended that it actually poses a conceptual problem to Scribblenauts: do you spend endless agonizing hours wresting with Rube Goldberg-esque combinations of machine items, summoned characters, objects and accoutrement to solve a simple puzzle, or do you just summon a jetpack and fly up into the tree to rescue the cat? Yes, it’s fantastic and entertaining and awe-inspiring to pull off esoteric solutions to simple problems, but the game doesn’t really reward you sufficiently for the effort—you get a few more points and a little more currency, but not enough to justify the aneurysm you give yourself trying to figure out how to put the poison on the meat and throw it to the piranha (instead of throw the bottle of poison at the piranha, like I kept doing).

Robotic T-Rex vs. Superhero!

On the subject of game mechanics, the biggest execution problem with Scribblenauts is the control scheme. The D-pad moves the camera, and all movement (jumping, walking, etc) is performed by sweeps and taps on the touch screen. This is a very awkward experience for all involved. Expect to hurl your DS across the floor a few times as an errant tap with the stylus sends your character into a spiked pit, or into a pool of water with a shark, when you actually intended him to walk up a ladder. Interactions with items are handled by tapping the item, the character, or the NPC. Alas, it isn’t immediately clear which item expects which behavior to perform the expected action. Watch in frustration as the item you conjured gets hurled like a baseball at the NPC, causing him to attack you mercilessly (failing the level) when in actuality you just wanted to hand the item to him. Scribblenauts has a very clear categorization of what items can perform what functions—thrown, shot, put in, taken out, climbed, etc—but this information is not immediately made clear to the player. You can summon tens of thousands of items, but you can’t always interact with them in the way you expect to. At times, the simplest of objectives becomes a horrible, endless sequence of trial and error trying to get your character to perform the basest of actions without maiming himself.

In many ways, these are game-breaking elements. It’s impossible to ignore these issues; they are festering and pulsing right in your face at all times, crippling the utopic experience many gamers envisioned after getting wind of early demos and screenshots of Scribblenauts . In other ways, it doesn’t really matter. This is a game where you get out of it what you put into it—or what you type into it, to be exact. Yes, the controls are borked, and yes, the endless sandbox solution system leads to more frustration and confusion than actual puzzle solving—but so what? It’s impossible to deny that Scribblenauts is fun, fun, fun! If you don’t mind eschewing the actual levels and just mucking about with the near endless potential of the game to cause mayhem and mischief, the potential is endless.

Summon a vampire at your own risk. Seriously.

Closing Statement:
A brilliant idea executed awkwardly, Scribblenauts is a marvelously entertaining game, right up until the realization that the endless creativity is a gameplay hindrance. You can conjure up tens of thousands of items, but to what end? “Spleen” isn’t something you need to be able to pull up to solve any problem, ever, and there’s only so many Cthulu vs. God on a skateboard vs. vampire with a shotgun combinations you can kick out before getting bored. Once you figure out the half-dozen or so genuinely useful items, you whiz through every level without breaking a sweat. Add to this the frustratingly awkward game mechanics, and Scribblenauts falls short of its revolutionary promise.

And yet, it’s still an absolute recommendation. Weird contradiction, I know, but you have to give it to 5th Cell for creating a game that tries to think outside the box. It will be a long time before we see a game as genuinely creative as this. And it is endlessly fun, so long as you set your expectations reasonably. I haven’t experienced as much delight with a Nintendo DS game in quite a while as the simple act of seeing what ridiculous items can be conjured. Sure, they’re useless in the game, but that’s beside the point.

The Verdict:

Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: 5th Cell
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: September 15th, 2009
Rated: Everyone 10 and older

Lady, I don't even know you!

The Charge:
Tap into the rhythm!

Opening Statement:
With the music game genre already stuffed to the gills with a glut of titles since it exploded into pop-culture conscience with the successful birth of the Guitar Hero franchise in late 2005, Nintendo; probably the undisputed masters of the casual gaming niche, look to be eyeing a piece of that fat money pie with their latest release, Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS.  The sequel to 2005’s Japanese only GBA release Rhythm Tengoku, Rhythm Heaven looks to take the simplistic, frenetic game play that developer TNX (the makers of the WarioWare series) are known for, and use the audio-visual improvement between the GBA and DS to stand atop the tide of lacklustre music titles clogging retail shelves worldwide.  But just how loudly and how proudly does Rhythm Heaven sing?

Somehow I doubt working on a real assembly line is this much fun...

Facts of the Case:
Brass tacks.  Rhythm Heaven is simply put, WarioWare with an extremely heavy focus on music.  TNX have taken their flagship series, stripped out the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gimmick, and instead based every facet of the game on gamers’ ability to recognize and keep a beat.  It’s bold, it’s experimental, 99% of the time it’s flat out insane, and as this gamer himself found out during the span of one lazy evening, it’s addictive as all hell.

The Evidence:
Okay, so let’s see how Jon’s evening game time went when he sat down with Rhythm Heaven.  First things first, we’ve got to tilt the DS onto its side and hold it like a small book.  Okay, I can do that.  It’s weird and scary, but I can do that.  Right off the bat, the game throws a curve ball, by asking gamers to perform a tiny minigame (can I use the term “microgame” without being sued by Nintendo?) in order to get past the title screen.  There are only three of these tiny little actions that make up the entirety of Rhythm Heaven’s control scheme, but believe you me when I say that this one of those “in-a-million” titles that is literally a snap to pick up and play, but will take innumerable hours to master.  Within ten minutes of tapping the stylus, performing quick little wrist flicks, or holding the stylus against the screen; I had operated a factory assembly line, taken orders from a fanatical drill sergeant duck, fuelled freshly build robots, and led a chorus of monkey’s in clapping along to their favourite teen pop idol.  All of which move to the beat of stage specific piece of music that has embarrassingly become stuck in my head for the better part of a week.

Parappa can't touch my skillz!

Rhythm Heaven has that crazy sense of fooly-cooly style that moves at a hyper-kinetic pace and doesn’t take itself at all seriously.  It’s not at all a stretch of the imagination to move from level to level, going from playing ping-pong to slicing vegetables as a Ninja dog in time with the music.  Performing well and attaining the highest of the game’s four end-level grades will grant players a gold medal which can be exchanged for meaningless little rhythm toys like a box of business cards, or a telephone.  The rewards are as pointless as the one’s in TNX’s WarioWare games, but the journey itself is so fun that it’s well worth the time to try and master each stage.  Gamers looking to unlock everything are standing in front of a long road indeed, and the wind is most certainly a gale.  Like its predecessor’s, I can see Rhythm Heaven melting hours of boredom out of long car rides (so long as you’re not the one behind the wheel).

Binary Solo!! 0000001!

Rebuttal Witness:
It’s almost a worthless gesture to try and rate the visuals in a game like Rhythm Heaven.  Players will be experiencing a myriad of graphical styles within the span of minutes.  It’s a torrential downpour of artistic style ranging from simple silhouettes, to scratchily animated pencil sketches; blocky 3D stick figures, and detailed 2D drawings.  The thing to mention is that it seems each graphical styling perfectly matches the feel of the level, and more importantly the rhythm of the accompanying music.  Graphics mongers will look past Rhythm Heaven without batting so much as an eyelash, gamers wanting a more esoteric experience will find one of empyrean scale.
If I had one complaint, and again, this is truly one of the pickiest of nits.  The handful of levels that actually feature full vocals can sometimes be a little of the grating side.  It’s nothing that affects game play in the slightest, and I’m not asking that for the sequel Nintendo spring for Jim Steinman to pen the lyrics; but they probably could’ve done better than “Hey now, here is my song, for you, yeah that’s right!”  That’s a Chad Kroeger level of effort there.

Said I, I'm a little dangerous! Girl I'd love to show ya!

Closing Statement:
Going into this review I was more than a little apprehensive.  I do consider myself a full-fledged gamer with hardcore roots.  Hell, I play wearing a headband like Ryu from Street Fighter.  But would WarioWare with music work?  Would this be just as much fun as everything else TNX have been involved in, or just another “casual game” to end up dying a loathsome death under the crushing depths of the bargain bin?  Surprisingly, a musical WarioWare turned out to be an inspired idea and Rhythm Heaven has enough unique style and charisma to keep gamers hands glued to their DS.  Putting this one down and keeping it down is two completely different things.  For gamers who have even a passing interest in music games, Rhythm Heaven is a megaton of fun, a must-own title that will not disappoint.

The Verdict:

Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: TNX
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: April 5th, 2009
Rated: E for Everyone.

Our local Walmart is undergoing renovations. We were doing some shopping there over the weekend, so I decided to check out the expanded electronics section. Giving the game case a once-over for any clearance deals, I saw they were selling Professor Layton for $34.88. Surprising since it was only $29.99 when it came out over a year ago, and I recall seeing it in a clearance bin in that same store last summer for $10. I don’t know how Walmart decides on in-store pricing, but gouging older (possibly less price-savvy) DS fans who don’t know they can get the same game online for under $30 is pretty shady. I’m not going to blame Lisa Kudrow for the price hike, but I will embed her ad after the break.

It’s Canada 3, America 1 as Erich welcomes Adam, Jon, and Steve to talk games and correct his meager knowledge of Canadian geography. They talk Demon’s Souls, Sly Cooper 2, Hammerin’ Hero, Legends of Wrestlemania, Suikoden Tierkreis, Resident Evil 4, and Tetris DS. In news, Jon’s excitement about an early release for PS3-exclusive inFamous turns into a debate about the marketing wisdom of using demos as pre-order bonuses, Steve joins the throngs of Xbox 360 owners rejoicing over Microsoft adding the E74 error to its 3-year warranty, and Adam uses his +4 charm to get everyone to care about the new World of Warcraft patch. After minor technical difficulties, the boys wrap things up with this week’s Symposium Ad Nauseum, asking deep questions about why the gaming cliches that bug us the most are often those we hold most dear.

Have an existential question about exploding barrels? Let us know by emailing feedback@pixelverdict.com.

You can listen to the show with the player below, download it here, or subscribe through iTunes or by adding our feed to your podcatcher of choice.

108 Stars of Destiny on the Nintendo DS.

Opening Statement:

Suikoden Tierkreis marks the debut of Konami’s long-running RPG series Suikoden onto the Nintendo DS. Some elements get left behind in the scaling down to its tiny, dual screens, but enough of the game remains to make it worthwhile for fans of the franchise to explore. Think of it as a diet version of Suikoden, calorie-free but still delicious-tasting.

Facts of the Case:

A group of young friends in a small farmer village head out to clear out some monsters, and in doing so stumble upon a strange book. After touching it, their heads fill with strange visions of an epic battle unfolding, and they find strange powers have now been unlocked within them. To make matters stranger, they can now perceive strange changes to the land—forests appearing where there were no forests previously, buildings popping up out of nowhere, and magical gateways connecting to other, strange parallel worlds.

Unfortunately for the youths, by stumbling upon this book, they have brought attention to themselves by the Order, a malicious religious organization sweeping through the land and subjugating cultures and lands that do not bow down to its authority. They are trying to collect similar books, and send soldiers to raze their village in search for it. It is up to them to stand up to the Order and fight against the tide of oppression, and find like-minded individuals to join their revolution.

The Evidence:

A distillation of a great franchise, Suikoden Tierkreis crams a respectable amount of gameplay into a tiny little cartridge. It isn’t quite as deep, as complex or as noteworthy an entry as past franchise offerings, which is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Think of it more as a spin-off than a sequel; a game that emulates the more attractive elements of the Suikoden franchise (collecting the 108 Stars of Destiny, recruiting and amassing a growing fortress, fighting against an oppressive government) without any of the depth of character development or story. Hardcore franchise fans may feel robbed, but most will enjoy the ease in picking up the game on-the-go.

Though often overshadowed by other, flashier RPG franchises, the Suikoden series has always meant one thing: rounding up a posse and overthrowing the government. The story and character changes from installment to installment, but all games involve in some form or another a young hero who collects the 108 Stars of Destiny, a loose Japanese interpretation and reworking of a classic Chinese Daoist novel “Shui Hu Zhuan”, where regular individuals from all walks of life who band together to fight for truth and justice in the world. The central theme to all games is the discovery that the protagonist (and usually his close friends) are members of the 108, and take it upon themselves to travel the country and gather up all the other heroes to set the world right again.

Suikoden Tierkreis has the 108 Stars of Destiny, and the fun of collecting them all up like big, human-sized Pokemon, but unlike other entries which always exist in the same world, this new game is set in a parallel world with no connection to the original franchise. This decision carries with it its pluses and minus. On the plus, you get a fresh template to start with, a clean slate to create some memorable and fantastic characters, locations and situations. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do this. The characters are likeable, but forgettable, simple re-caricatures of already familiar RPG faces, and the new world may as well be entitled “Generic RPG Land”. To make it worse, we lose a lot of memorable elements much beloved in previous installments, like seeing familiar faces pop up in cameos and historical events referenced.

Anyone that has taken Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Nintendo DS games for a spin should be immediate comfortable with the layout and design elements in Suikoden Tierkreis, with 3D character design and battle sequences on the bottom screen and game information and menu on the top. The battles are classic RPG style, players inputting commands for all four party members (down from six in previous games) and hitting “OK” before the action unfolds. And yes, like all good Suikoden games, random battles occur frequently, repeatedly and unrelentingly. Fortunately, the difficulty curve in Suikoden Tierkreis is noticeably lower than in previous installments, so the random battles feel at best annoying rather than punishing. The travel system is respectable, demanding characters hoof it by foot to new locations via world map, but once they have already been accessed, they can be accessed again quickly (a necessity for collecting all those characters). In addition, a seasonal feature has been added, with travel time on the world map advancing a global clock, moving between three seasons in the year, affecting which characters can be recruited at which time.

The mechanics of the game are strong, colorful and fun, with well designed characters (in appearance only) and familiar graphical flares and sound effects. The art direction is beautiful, with elegant use of shadows and colors and vibrant hand-drawn backgrounds, occasionally punctuated by anime movie sequences during key plot points. Taking advantage of the DS’s Wi-Fi capabilities, the game also offers users the chance to pair up their console with another gamer, exchanging characters, items and unique battle scenarios, which would be nifty, provided you can walk around randomly asking strangers if they happen to have a copy of Suikoden Tierkreis to play with you. The score should be immediately familiar to Suikoden devotees, reusing many of the same instruments and musical cues.

As for the story itself, it comes and goes, alternating between interesting and clichéd, with a painfully transparent villain and a protagonist that borders on being irritatingly cheerful. It makes you wish for the old Suikoden games where the hero was essentially silent. As the game unfolds and the scope of the world comes into focus, the game gets more interesting as the details of the Infinity and the Order unfold. I especially enjoy the Infinity, the idea of multiple worlds, with characters crossing through gateways back and forth. The story may not tie into other games in the series directly, but there have been quite a few suggestive mentions in past games of characters from alternate worlds appearing and disappearing unexpectedly. It might not be exactly what fans were hoping for, but even this review is having a hard time putting the game down for extended periods of time.

Rebuttal Witness:

The voice work is absolutely horrid, no getting around it. About six voice actors dub the voices of three dozen or so characters throughout the game, and the recording session must have involved balloons full of helium and bottles of Jack Daniels. I’ve heard some bad voice acting in my time, but Suikoden Tierkries makes the original Resident Evil games look like oratory masterpieces. If there was a way to turn off the dialogue without killing the music, we could give it a pass, but there is no way to do this—you’re stuck with it.

Closing Statement:

Judged solely on its own merits, Suikoden Tierkries features attractive graphics, likeable character designs, a large and vibrant cast of characters and a reasonably engaging story; definitely a solid, all-around average RPG. As a new entry in the long-standing Suikoden franchise, the game falls short, failing to live up to its lofty pedigree in depth of gameplay, story and mechanics, like a watered-down, lite version of the games that came before it.

Ironically, this “watered down” nature makes it ideal for the console. The game sacrifices depth and complexity for “pick up and go” portability, which is both the saving grace and curse of games on the Nintendo DS. Chasing down 108 Stars of Destiny on-the-go is undeniably entertaining. Fans of the series may feel slightly shortchanged, but they’ll be too busy collecting companions and exploring the Infinity to care too much.

The Verdict:

Seriously, though, I can’t wait. Heck, I’m just glad to see Nintendo try something new with the series. You OMG*LINK*N*TRAINZ*LOLZ party poopers can zip it… or put it in the comments. Everyone else should check out the trailer (courtesy of Joystiq) after the break.