Scribblenauts

Those of you who were gaming in the early to mid 90s might remember a little puzzle game series called The Incredible Machine. The premise was simple: you were given a task and a set up of various devices on the screen (boxing gloves, monkeys on bicycles, bowling balls, etc.) and you were tasked to complete Rube Goldberg machines based on the resources available for the level.

Anyone who has played this will be familiar with the occasional moment of frustration in which one might yell aloud: "If only I had a god damned [object], this would be so simple!"

Scribblenauts (5th Cell, 2009) entirely averts this issue by allowing you to insert absolutely anything you can think of into the game at no cost. No really, anything. The game's library of objects is vast boring on the absurd. I'll give you an example of just how mind-bogglingly huge the library is. The website Scribblenauts Guide has an object list which has literally hundreds of listed items, many of which are so obscure that I may need a dictionary to find out what they even are. And yet in an hour's gaming session today alone I managed to summon at least two things that are not in that list. Of course, for legal and censorship reasons there are certain things you can't put in there, like Mickey Mouse's giant vagina - nor can you put in things that don't exist, even in fiction. Manticores and time machines are fine, but you're not likely to find a car-jet or transmogrification supercannon in the game (I might check later though). Abstract concepts like love or racial intolerance, despite being perfectly fine nouns, also do not make an appearence. However, there are toucans, football players, mirrors, God, unicorns, pillows, hams and coffee makers galore.

This would be a lot easier with a toucan and God on my side too.

The objective is to use the vast array of tools at your disposal to enable your character, Maxwell, to gather starites. You'll either be required to complete seemingly simple objectives to make the starlite appear, or get to a starite that's out of reach through your imagination and ingenuity. The classic example is if a starite is stuck up a tree. You could chop it down with an axe, or summon a lumberjack, or burn it down, or climb with a ladder, or fly up, or summon a beaver. Ultimately many levels can be played using the same tried and true methods; the game doesn't really require you to be imaginative. You could just get through the levels as quickly and easily as possible, but that would make you a douchebag.

Try "kuala lumpur".

Ultimately the game relies on players being imaginative for the sheer hell of it. It's actually a little refreshing: video games have always been accused of stifling creativity, but here we have a game that encourages it, on the level of the absurdist and ferociously logical problem solving we barely remember from early childhood (along the lines of "Well I use a magic flying reindeer to fly up and use a freeze-gun on the nasty zombie!" -- and yes, you can do exactly that). In fact the sheer freedom's a little dizzying. More often than not you'll be required to find a way to fly. Initially I was enthralled by this idea, and challenged my friend to help me come up with the most implausibly awesome way to fly possible. Naturally, we gave Maxwell a jetpack. However, it's turned out to be far and away the most effective way to fly that I can think of, allowing me to fit in spaces in which a dragon or helicopter or roc could not fit. I am certain that there are alternatives, but the sheer breadth of opportunity has robbed me of innovation.

The game does at least try to encourage you though. For a start, you get style points for the obscurity of your summoned objects, as well as achievements (called merits) for managing certain feats (from using two different tools in a level, to using all new objects, to using a sea animal as a vehicle, and more). And if you choose to revisit a completed episode you will be asked to try and complete it three times in a row, without using previously used objects in subsequent attempts. These really keep your imagination working as you search for new solutions to familiar problems.

Another small complaint is that obvious solutions rarely seem to work. For example, in one level I had to move a powerless car. I summoned a mechanic, who promptly did absolutely fuck all. In another level I tried to get an undertaker to bury a corpse, and he also did absolutely nothing. I'm not entirely sure what all the different professions available are for. None of them seem to do anything when they encounter anything their job would involve. Put a doctor next to a leper and, although the two are attracted to each other, they have no interaction. I once tried to help a short-sighted man see with the healing hands of God himself. Turns out God's too fucking lazy to do anything.

Let's be fair though, there are a great many objects that have almost no possible use. In one mission I'm required to dress a mannequin, and the clothing options are vast. Is there a purpose to these items otherwise? Probably not. However, this is a game of whimsy and make-believe, and the enjoyment of the game comes not from solutions, but from realising your creative impulses instead.

Pokémon Platinum

Ah, Pokémon!

It means so much to so many people, but to me it means "guilty pleasure". It has all the shame of Twilight without the domestic abuse, and all the embarrassing awfulness of one of Monty Python's billions of unmemorable sketches, only without a good one to follow up on. And yet somehow it just keeps pulling me back, seducing me with its perfectly geometrical hairstyles, single-genus ecosystems, and the ability to name your rival "Douche".

Pokémon Platinum (Game Freak, 2008) is the third of the so-called "Generation IV" Pokémon games. I'm going to assume there is no-one left alive on the planet who is still unfamiliar with the Pokémon franchise. Even the marmoset-eating Amazonians who have yet to lay eyes on anyone from outside the jungle are probably at least getting the anime by now. However, since they probably haven't yet played the games (it will take a while before even original Game Boys work their way up river), I'll give a brief overview:

Pokémon games are essentially very stripped-down top-down RPGs. They make streamlining something of an art. "Epic stories?" asketh the games. "Bullshit! Want to know what your objective is? To catch 'em all, that's what. Why? Fuck you, that's why!" And oddly enough, that works. You start the game and set up your character, choosing your gender, name, and first Pokémon very quickly. From then on the game-world will bombard you with encouragement to go out and capture and train Pokémon. The entire world, as it appears, is utterly obsessed with the idea. Not once on your journeys will you meet anyone who doesn't adore Pokémon. You won't even meet anyone who even feels ambivalent about them. No; the whole world loves Pokémon and expects you to as well. Indeed, if anyone asks you and you get a rare "yes/no" dialogue option you can rest assured that the "no" response will link you right back to "yes".

It's hard to resist that kind of enthusiasm, but in case you can the game also uses a dozen techniques to make the process addictive as hell. For a start you receive a Pokédex which logs all the different kinds of Pokémon you receive or see. It's surprising how easily it will drive you to scour the long grass (where wild Pokémon attack) looking for each and every last type that could possibly appear in any given area. But there are also subtler systems are work: for example, each Pokémon has one or more "types" -- fire, flying, rock, etc. -- which define its elemental or physical traits, and there's something of a rock-paper-scissors system at work there, with certain types being weak or strong to other types. Successful trainers pretty much require a good variety of critters at their disposal. This not only ensures that you go out of your way to enslave new party members, but you also end up putting a lot of work in training them up, ensuring that you then spend a lot of time away from the story grinding away. Having the oppertunity to expand your little army, however, turns it from grinding into plain good fun.

The reason why I'm taking the time to talk about gameplay that's been consistent and unchanged in thirteen years is precisely because it's been consistent and unchanged in thirteen years. You could look at any review of Platinum Edition and it will almost certainly fail to talk about the gameplay in-depth, because the underlying system is identical to how it was over a decade ago. And not just the base system: many of the stats for various Pokémon and moves are identical, or have had only minor changes. The story, likewise, has been relatively unchanged over the years. You still come from a backwards little town where you live with your single mum, and a professor lives nearby who gives you your first Pokémon. You still advance through eight gyms where you earn badges to compete in the league. You still face off against a rival, and battle a villainous yet incompetent crime syndicate.

To put it bluntly, Nintendo's found a winning formula and they are utterly unwilling to replace or modify it. Sure, there are a few new features here: there's a day/night system based on the DS's clock, effecting which Pokémon come out in the wild when. There're some neat wireless tools I've yet to try out. So on, so forth. But you could remove any new feature without in any way affecting the overall game.

And nowhere is this unwillingness to change more evident than in the use of the DS's technology. Bear in mind that both Pokémon and the DS are made by Nintendo. Pokémon (and especially Platinum) are something of flagship games for the console, and you would expect that they'd make excellent use of the touchscreen built into the bottom of the console. Well, for the first hour or so of my gaming experience the bottom screen showed mostly this:

Pictured: efficient use of screen space.

That! Using up my power, no less! For ages I had absolutely nothing but a static boring image taking up the lower screen of my DS. What a waste. And what do I get later on, when I acquire the much touted Pokétch?

&^)*^&*)%!!!

Yes, it's a watch. And not just any watch! Pokétch comes with many useless apps, like a pedometer, something to listen to the noise each of your Pokémon make, and other such rubbish. It's a total waste of the technology at hand. Granted, the touch screen is used for combat, and you can use it to scroll through functions in your inventory or Pokédex, but that's hardly much, and for the latter you'd be better off just using the arrow pad, since you'll be using it anyway. In the mean time every menu and bit of dialogue shows up on the top screen, requiring you to use conventional controls to use them. The conventional response here is along the lines of "what the fuck!?" Would it be too much to ask for Nintendo to make use of the technology it's invested in?

Just for shits and giggles, here's how I feel the lower screen should look:

Voilá! The menu is now centered around the same silly Pokétch that was there previously, only now it obsoletes the X button and is easier to access. And for an added bonus there's enough room for a dialogue box at the top. How hard was that?

To be fair, Pokémon Platinum is far from a bad game. It's addictive, fun and innocent. But it'd really fails to use the technology at hand, and it's really short of any innovation. I think that after more than a decade we should be entitled to something at least slightly new from Nintendo.