Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (Wii) Review

Drawn to Life was originally a game on the Nintendo DS, created by the wonderful minds at 5th Cell, who also created the recently-released Scribblenauts. Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is the follow up to the original game. While the DS version was developed by 5th Cell, the Wii version was created by Planet Moon Studios. So, how did the Wii version turn out?

Initial impressions were not good at all. The first 15 minutes or so of the game were spent introducing the world and the storyline in the form of short text boxes. This is fine, as the game is targeted at the younger demographic; the problem with this is that there are about 4 text boxes and some art between each 10-to-15-second-long loading time.

During this, as they introduce the world, you’re instructed to draw the Sun, the Moon and your home planet. When this reviewer started out, he was confused as to their definition of ’world’. Initially you would think that they mean a planet; however, the preview of your drawing has always got a background of a blue sky and some green grass on the ground. Needless to say, everybody now lived in a giant house floating in outer space.

The character you play as is literally the god of a race known as the Raposa, a cat-like race that looks similar to the people in Animal Crossing. It’s quite unfortunate, however, that the character you create looks incredibly out of place in a 3D environment. The best way of describing the look is playing as Paper Mario in Super Mario Galaxy. As the character takes damage—and I wish I was making this up—they lose a bit of clothing. Once the character is essentially naked, you lose a life. For a kids game, I found this rather strange—there’s nothing wrong with a life bar, right? As for the story, the Book of Life goes missing and naturally you’re the one that has to go and retrieve it. During the game, you’ll have to do tasks for other people in your Village, where the constant trekking through levels quickly becomes a chore and seemingly takes an eternity to reach.

While drawing your own designs on the DS was fun, it’s a completely different story on the Wii. As the Wii Remote is nowhere near as precise as a Stylus and touch screen, you generally have to forgo the intricate designs you were thinking of placing on your hero and end up with a relatively plain looking character. A minor niggle with the character creator is that the predefined hair ‘stamps’ they give to you to work with aren’t able to actually fit on the Hero’s head, unless your character happened to have a head the size of a baby’s.

While the game’s art design is great, the gameplay, however, isn’t. The analogue stick essentially works like a D-pad, with no way to walk slowly or faster—it’s simply an on/off situation. The character’s floaty jumps don’t really help either when trying to jump for a platform, either. The levels are also rather repetitive; there isn’t much of an attempt to break up the similar levels, aside from some vehicles which you can drive around. On top of this, the game isn’t really too challenging. Yes, the game is targeted at kids, but it’s at a difficulty that a child would probably not even consider to be hard.

There are specific parts of the levels that are highlighted by a dotted-line square. These sections of levels are able to be drawn on to allow your character to reach a platform that is otherwise unreachable by a normal jump. While it allows for some creativity in the levels, the floaty control of the Wii Remote sometimes makes drawing the lines frustrating.

For some reason or another, Planet Moon Studios decided to include some multiplayer support for the game in the form of, well, Sports minigames. None of these even remotely play like the Single Player game—that’s right, no platforming or drawing. It really does give the impression that it’s tacked on to try to cater for the stereotypical Wii owner but, to be honest, it is doubtful that people at parties would ask “who wants to play some Drawn to Life Basketball?” when there is already (seemingly hundreds of) games out there that do a far better job of delivering a multiplayer experience.

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter tries to bring the DS experience to the Wii, but it falls short as, thanks to the limitations of the Wii Remote and the generally repetitive, unchallenging experience, it would struggle to keep the attention of a child for the duration of the game. If you’re a fan of the series, give it a rent, otherwise, spend your money elsewhere.

Graphics 8.0

Aside from the self-drawn creation, the art direction is colourful and great, although abeit repeditive in some places.

Gameplay 7.0

Levels are far too repetitive. Floaty Wii Remote controls dont help at all.

Sound 5.0

Repetitive tunes mixed with very annoying sound effects make the experience feel more tedious.

Tilt 5.0

There isnt much here for many players at all. The story is relatively short and easy, offering little challenge. Multiplayer feels tacked on and pointless.

Value 3.0

Being well out of the targeted audience for this game, I found it hard to get into at all. The unresponsive controls didnt help its cause at all.