Believe it or not, there’s a strategy guide for Scribblenauts that will teach you how to solve problems in a game where solutions to problems are supposed to be nearly limitless.
Scribblenauts, 5th Cell’s upcoming DS puzzler in which you figure out problems by thinking of objects and then conjuring those very things – which run in the hundreds of thousands – to solve them, might be the last game you’d want a strategy guide for. After all, the point of the game is to flex your creative muscle and test the depth of the game’s word and object database to pull out as many solutions to problems as your mind can come up with.
So you shouldn’t need, or even want, a guide to tell you how to solve a puzzle. That defeats the purpose for any game made entirely of puzzle levels – imagine buying a guide for Professor Layton – but makes even less sense for Scribblenauts, since, if the game works as advertised, the solutions are limitless. Having problems with zombies? Summon a time travel machine, get a T-Rex, time travel back, kill zombies. Who needs a guide when stuff like that actually works?
Still, here it is: the Scribblenauts strategy guide. “Every level description will feature 3 different solutions, as well as one obscure solution, to solving each puzzle with the fewest objects in the shortest time,” the product description on GameStop says. “With over 220 levels, this guide contains over 880+ strategies.”
As a GameStop customer review puts it bluntly: “This is a stupid product. I have not used this guide, but I’m sure it’s good at what it does, but Scribblenauts is a game where you use imagination and creativity to pass through obstacles. A strategy guide for this game just takes that all away.”
True that may be, but now that I take a closer look, there actually might be some value to this thing. It contains a listing of 500+ “obscure words you never would have thought of directly from the dev team” which could be cool if you want to see what the game has to offer without taking the time to wrack your brain for really esoteric words. There’s also tips and tricks for level creation, direct from the developers, which could be neat.
[Via MTV Multiplayer]
