Games: roleplaying vs puzzle

In the last month or two I’ve played Jade Empire and Scribblenauts and together they helped me solidify my gaming preferences. Namely, I love roleplaying games and I hate puzzle games.

Jade Empire

Released in 2005, Jade Empire is an original Xbox roleplaying game from Bioware, makers of my favourites Dragon Age and the Mass Effect games. It takes place in a fake region of ancient China and lets you play as the hero, taking you from a remote martial arts school all the way to the capital city to figure out and fix the corruption crossing the country.

When you’re setting up a character you can choose to be male or female and then choose between normal, fast and slow yet heavy-hitting fighting styles. I chose to create a female character that uses a fast style of fighting. It was sort of akin to the rogue class in Dragon Age, and once I got used to the weird controls (let’s face it, the game is 5 years old and companies have figured out how to do better since then), she was a lot of fun to play.

I also enjoyed some of the companions available, particularly Henpecked Hou and Wild Flower. Henpecked Hou is a bun master who used to be a revered fighter in the Imperial Arena. He doesn’t fight because his wife won’t allow him to, but he can enable you to use the Drunken Master fighting style by throwing bottles of booze your way. Rather than simply having a supportive function like Henpecked Hou, Wild Flower is a little girl who died in a flood but whose body was chosen as a host by a Heavenly Gate Guardian (read: good demon). Any time a combat situation takes place, Wild Flower sort of Hulks out and becomes a big ass-kicking demon. The rest of the companions were varying levels of okay, but none of them are really worth noting.

Overall, the story was good. I was very surprised when the big reveal happened. I left the game feeling very satisfied, wanting to play more games. Unfortunately, one of my next games was Scribblenauts.

Scribblenauts

Oh Scribblenauts. I don’t think I’ve hated a game this much since Professor Layton and the Curious Village. But really, what both of these games revealed to me is that no matter how cool the premise like with Scribblenauts, or how beautiful the art like with Professor Layton, I am destined to become enraged approximately five to ten puzzles in.

But let’s backtrack. Scribblenauts is a Nintendo DS puzzle game by Warner Bros that delivers on its tagline “Write Anything. Solve Everything.” For each puzzle there’s a problem–someone needs you to bring them something or you need to get your character to a specific place. How you solve that problem is up to you. Just think of what object could fix the solution, write it out and it will appear. Sounds simple and yet… ten puzzles into the game post-tutorial, I wanted to throw my DS into the wall. I had genuine hate in my heart for Scribblenauts.

But I gave it a day, thought through the puzzle, and came back. After approximately forty or fifty tries between both days, I gave up and looked at a walkthrough, which is probably for the best because I wouldn’t have thought of a bear on my own. Once past that puzzle I progressed though another five or six without any need for a walkthrough but rapidly knew I still wasn’t having fun. I just hate this game.

I am by no means saying Scribblenauts is a bad game. I doubt it made any “Game of the Year” lists, but the creators were also clearly swinging for the fences and I applaud their effort. But at the same time, I can’t get behind it. At least, not enough to try playing any further because I don’t like puzzle games.

But at the end of the day Scribblenauts was worth the try because I learned something I’ll take with me for the rest of my gaming life: I know what games I love and I know what games I hate. And that’s worth a few hours of rage.

Buy Jade Empire from Amazon.com
Buy Jade Empire from Amazon.ca

Buy Scribblenauts from Amazon.com
Buy Scribblenauts from Amazon.ca

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