Some (French!) video impressions

Thanks to (yet again) @Scribblenaut for this find. Gaming websites have the bad habit of showing us a little bit of everything in a game without actually showing us the game being played. Thankfully the French site GameKult has a bunch of videos up of actual people playing the game. I've decided to link them all here and do some minor impressions and speculations from what we see.



This video shows off the level editor quite well. It also helps ease my fear of us using up our DS memory too quickly. This video has a starite, a werewolf, 3 zombies, and a finally a chainsaw, and you STILL have room to add items.

One thing I am disappointed in is that the chainsaw couldn't kill the zombies. Clearly all zombie movies and games have lied to me! Good to see the game won't be SUPER easy, though. Maxwell just took a few hits and fell to the two zombie horde. Also it was hilarious to see zombie vs. werewolf action. I like that not all enemies are in cahoots with each other.



This is actually a very, very amazing video. It shows the final puzzle level for The Gardens, and I think we begin to understand what the developers mean by the difficulty level increasing.

The main goal here isn't too hard, but it's involved. It seems you have to pick some flowers for this young girl. There are several flowers and each have some obstacle you have to get by. One is guarded by a bee, another by some piranhas, and the 3rd is on a cliff by the water. For a puzzle level, there sure is a lot of action involved here.

The previewer does pretty well, and you can tell it's "real" as he thinks through the problem like anyone would. The gun kills the bee, which is a tad overkill, but whatever works! He then uses bread (I think) to distract the fish long enough to grab the 2nd flower, which was a neat trick.

The video also showed us that electronics CAN short out, as he ruined his little jetpack after falling in the water.

I do wonder what was up with the basket. Seems like either Maxwell or the girl kept kicking it over, knocking the flowers out. Was that an AI bug, or possibly a feature of it being an open basket? Not sure. But it wasn't pretty to see.

All in all this is probably my favorite video ever released so far. It feels very real, and it shows us a level that is a bit more involved and challenging, in addition to the fact we get to see the thought that goes into this. This level in particular will be hard to achieve "under par".



This next video shows off two pretty simple levels, both puzzle.

The first I don't fully understand due to the French explanation. It seems you needed to come up with an object to jump over that person...I guess. Here we see a bit of a glitch as Maxwell, while on the skateboard, clips through the ground. Though it was far from a graceful jump he still earns himself a star.

The next level is somehow more hilarious than it should be. Again, due to the language I'm not sure what the goal is, but it seems to be you have to spawn in 3-4 "farm" creatures. Here we're shown a pretty interesting mechanic of being able to "store" animals in the barn. Simply dragging and dropping them is all that is needed.

There's some goofy thing that happen with the animals, though. The chicken, for example, kinda just...sits on the farmer's face. Not sure what's going on there. Upon further inspection it seems the chicken is flying indefinitely. The turkey does this as well. Kinda disappointing that there's no difference between a bird and a semi-flightless bird. I wonder if penguins can fly...

Anyways, what makes this video utterly hilarious is the epic farmer riding sheep with chicken vs. crocodile. The chicken is devoured, though Maxwell is able to save the sheep (by dragging him to the barn) while the farmer kills the croc with a pitchfork. It was a small touch, but it's unintended scenes that unfold like this that truly show off the impressiveness of Scribblenauts...the sheer scope and depth.