Super Scribblenauts is the best damned game in the world.
Okay, maybe that’s a little too general. Someone is bound to complain.
Super Scribblenauts is the best damned puzzle game in the world.
There, much better.
The premise is almost insultingly simple: You –a character named Maxwell, though you can superficially change that if you’d like- are a Scribblenaut, armed with your notebook and a pencil. The point of the game is to find Starite. To get Starite, you look up constellations. Each constellation is actually a puzzle level with an idiotically simple task. Once the level is completed, you get a Starite.
These insultingly, idiotically simple levels include (among many, many others)
~ A level with a large cliff and a confused looking man standing near the edge. The mission is to help the mountain climber down the cliff without getting hurt.
~In a level with three tanks, the two on the ends filled with some random animal and the one in the middle left open, ‘find an animal that has the characteristics of both’.
~A prehistoric themed level filled with dinosaurs. Your mission is to ‘kill all the dinosaurs without the use of weapons or meteorites’
Your tools for such jobs?
Anything you damn well want.
The point isn’t to beat the levels. A four year old can do that. The point is to dick around and complete the level in the most explosively awesome way possible.
You click on the notebook, and you write in a word. With Super Scribblenauts (the sequel to the original Scribblenauts, which I haven’t had the honor of playing), you can pile adjective upon adjective on whatever item it is. Provided it’s not copyrighted, filthy, or a specific person*, you can summon it.
You want God riding a polkadot Cthulu while wearing a monocle, top hat, and wielding a bazooka?
You can do that.
You want your bazooka wielding, Cthulu riding God to fight an army of giant vampires wielding flamethrowers?
You can do that too.
You can do anything you want- and if you couldn’t do it with the original commands alone, typing in an adjective will usually fix it. You want Shoggoth (yes, he’s in there too) fighting a ghost pirate riding in a flying bathtub while armed with a freeze ray?You can do that.
The game knows it’s not about the Starite, it’s about dicking around and having as much fun as possible with nothing but a dictionary and a DS.
A problem some people seem to have with the game is the sheer mental overload. When given the chance to make almost anything you want, people have found their brains freezing up and find themselves unable to do anything more than create a paltry set of wings to make their characters fly, and maybe a lasso to grab onto things.
For those afflicted, fear not. This will wear off in time.
Now, for those who already love the game, here's some minor Easter Egg Interaction Spoilers
(though you probably already knew these).
** Longcat, Tacgnol, and Ceiling Cat are all summonable creations.
** God vs. Atheist. The Atheist will get a thought bubble and God will die instantly.
** Lawyers will chase ambulances.
** Witches and Wizards will fight on their own. The Witch will die, but the Wizard will be turned into a frog.
** Philosoraptor will get you a velociraptor in a monocle.
** Putting 'gentlemanly' before anything will make it have a top hat and monocle, and make it friendly.
** You can summon any of the names seen in the credits.
** Death, meteorite, nuke, and epic fail are all one hit kills. Watch out.
** Death potion kills anything you want it to.
Seriously, this game is awesome.