Scribblenauts release date snuck up on me like some kind of ninja covered in WD-40

I beat Tron 2.0 finally. It was a pretty enjoyable game. Had a few problems here and there, but nothing to major. The ending was a bit abrupt. It reminded me a bit of an old NES game. "Bam, you killed the end boss!"..."The end, go do something else now" kind of thing. The only other complaint I had was with the upgrade system. There are little guys wandering around, code optimizers I think they were called. Say you have a sniper rifle, it starts at red and takes up 3 slots of memory. If you find one of the little code optimizers you can upgrade it, it will take 2 slots of memory and up the dmg/acc etc. Upgrading to gold will make it take 1 slot and better stats. Point is, the code optimizers are pretty few and far between. That would be fine with me, I get that I don't get to upgrade everything, but some of the weapons and items you get really late in the game. I might have just missed some of the optimizers or found one of the weapons late but I had no chance to upgrade it all the way. I might pull up one of my old saves and hunt around a bit more. After I beat the game I checked out the light cycle section. It was a neat little addition where you battle in different arenas for unlockables. I was a bit surprised at the thought put into the different arenas. Some had tight areas with a speed curse (all players are forced to turbo boost) and others had different themes. All the arenas had a different feel without really using that many different items or upgrades. It was a great use of resources. They got quite a bit of mileage out of it and unless they were just making it look simple, it didn't eat up much dev time.

I need to pick up a copy of Scribblenauts. It seems like it was made for me. It really looks like it fits with one of my favorite game philosophies. Give players a toolbox and let their creativity solve the problems. I think some of the most entertaining games let the player be creative in the solutions. Take Eve online for example, there is never a set way to do things. If there is a preferred way to do something there is always enough wiggle room left by the designers for the players to use. For example, Titans can take a year just to be able to pilot. They take unimaginable time and resources to build. When I was playing I think about 7 had been built. The titans main weapon was a doomsday device. If it fired it off pretty much everything was gone, wiped out. It could only use the device like once every 2hrs if I remember right. So the strategy was to pop the doomsday device and warp out of there before they could send a wave of ships to destroy you. The general strategy for fighting a titan was to send in a first wave of attackers in junk ships, then once it used its doomsday device send in another wave. It didn't work often though, by the time the second wave warped in the titan had warped away. None of the ships that could knock out a warp drive (and hold the titan in place) would survive the doomsday detonation. So the strategy remained the same for quite awhile. It was costly and pretty ineffective. That is until one player decided to find another way. He outfitted a ship to knock out the titans warp drive with all the armor and shields he could possibly add. It had been thought impossible to create a ship capable of locking down a titans warp and surviving the blast but when he maxed out his skills and got the best equipment he could he found that he had just barely enough armor to survive. Like I said, the general knowledge of the time thought it was impossible. So when the titan pilot popped his doomsday and started to warp away to safety I'm sure he was in disbelief to find he was unable to escape. The second wave of attackers warped in and blew him away. It completely changed the tactics for titan combat. That's why I liked Eve, there was always some new tactic that defied the conventional wisdom of the day that was changing combat. In one of the tournaments BoB had created a setup that was thought of as unbeatable. They had one every tournament with pretty much the same set up and were thought to win this tournament as well. Some group took a look at it and came up with a strategy of outfitting super fast junk ships with a type of jamming drone. The drones would interrupt the healers BoB were using and disrupt some of their attacks. The jammers were thought of as completely useless, almost nobody ever used them. They used the fast ships to close the distance and get in close, launched the bots and shut BoB down. It wasn't even close. Now if they would have tried the same thing next year it probably wouldn't have worked. Point is, Eve gave players enough tools to create their own strategy, not just follow what was thought of as "best". A lot of other games there is a "best" equip or a set way to do the most damage. I'm for giving the players a sort of toolbox, or set of flexible mechanics and let the players intelligence and creativity craft some of the gameplay. Scribblenauts seems to really encourage players creativity. It doesn't lock them into the idea that there is one way to solve a puzzle. I'm sure I'll have a extensive write up on it as soon as I get a chance to play it. For now I'll just say that I'm eager to get playing. It looks like the type of game that I'm excited for the series. Even if the first game has a few bugs or issues it looks like the type of game that can just keep improving and expanding. Armored core was like that for me. The first game was pretty good, but you could tell that if the series was allowed to keep going that it would add more and more detail. If it had time it could just refine and add depth and keep getting better and better. Anyway, here's hoping Scribblenauts has a long life and has time to keep getting more refined and even more expansive.

Humorbot 1.0 has deemed this post long and not up to whatever units a fictitious bot designed to be humorous, measures funny in. Humorbot has just informed me that he measures humor in contractions, like when your muscles contract to laugh. It is the most scientific and also slightly humorous way to measure funny. It also explains why he thinks childbirth is hilarious. He has also informed me that the first sentence of this paragraph is pretty much unintelligible. Sentence readability aside, Humorbot will now report his humorous observation.

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Dispensing witty observation 89.0

Have you ever noticed how the fewer wheels a mode of transportation has the cooler it is? Example to follow...

Example, a bus is not very cool, due to its excessive wheels. A car is noticeably cooler in comparison to the aforementioned bus. To continue the comparison in its logical and laugh educing manner, a 3 wheeler is cooler than a car...

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as is clearly evident in this undoctored image.

a motorcycle is cooler than a 3 wheeler. Therefore logic deems the unicycle the coolest mode of transportation available to humans.

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well the joke almost worked humor bot, better luck next time. While he recompiles I'm going to try and get some work done.