Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure is exactly what you think it is. It carries the write-anything-and-make-it-real appeal of Scribblenauts and crosses it with the seventy-nine year history of DC Comics. Licensed characters, previously restricted to a sanctioned cameo here and there, are now at the forefront of creative solutions. In fact, thousands of heroes, villains, and objects tied to DC’s lore are available and employable for any of Unmasked’s challenges. Or not at all; Scribblenauts’ existing, exhaustive, and impressive library of nouns and adjectives are in active duty. Any way you want to play it, Scribblenauts Unmasked is happy to oblige. The question is whether or not it can keep the player happy in the process.
The narrative justification for Maxwell and his twin sister Lily’s cross pollination with the DC Universe is appropriately short and sweet. The starites powering Lily’s world-hopping globe rest under the guard of DC’s most egregious villains. Batman (because who else would instantly know something was amiss) invites Maxwell and Lily to aid the Justice League in pursuit of the lost starites. DC’s definitely had its share of dark, brooding heroes and violent imagery, but Scribblenauts Unmasked positions the brand in a more cheerful light. Cursory mischief and eeeevil intent take precedent over mature themes, lending Scribblenauts Unmasked a more tender and lighthearted feel. It’s as cute, and it’s effective.
Scribblenauts Unmasked is organized in an endearing yet haphazard fashion. Hub areas like Gotham, Metropolis, or Themyscira will contain a near endless supply of DC representatives and random NPC’s in need of help. Batgirl might want Maxwell to conjure something that could scare Bizarro, a random geek might want a super hero’s cape, or maybe you need to stop a mugger without the use of violence. From fetch quests to the other size of the fairly open map to creating items to justify a simple request, most of these tasks are easily solved in under a minute. Completing them earns Maxwell reputation points, and reputation points are used to unlock other hubs or one of six different DC hero origin stories.
The meat of Scribblenauts Unmasked is consumed through specific instances that take place in each of its twelve hub areas. A superhero will have tracked down a supervillain, always in league with Maxwell’s nefarious doppelganger. For example, Deathstroke and doppelganger break into the Justice League Watchtower to try and unleash Amazo. Maxwell needs to find a way to jump down a spike-lined chasm (I turned invisible), navigate through blocks of frozen bombs (flamethrower), and then combat defend Cyborg from Amazo after Deathstroke and Doppelganger high-tail it out of there (giant bazooka).
The difficulty of completing these challenges ranges from aggressively easy to oddly peculiar. Either Scribblenauts Unmasked doesn’t seem to care what exactly you create to solve the problem, or it’s looking for something highly specific to combat a foe. For those not versed in DC lore, Batman’s always available Batcomputer contains detailed information behind each character or setting’s background, which usually leads to a hint of what needs to be done. At the risk of being too easy, Scribblenauts Unmasked actively discourages players reusing the same word over and over. You take a 50% hit on reputation points each time you double dip, encouraging creativity through both puzzles and combat situations. Mr. Mxyzptlk also shows up from time to time and offers Maxwell the chance to double reputation points in exchange for obliging weird restrictions (only use DC characters, no weapons, etc) on puzzle solutions.
The Hero Creator is another neat facet of Scribblenauts Unmasked. Customizing a new characters appearance and set of powers, it’s possible to effectively make up anyone (or, ahem, anyone from a separate license) that didn’t make his/her/its way into the game. You can even share your creations over the Internet. It’s cool feature that’s mechanically unnecessary but thematically fun and appropriate, which kind of speaks for the whole game. Scribblenauts certainly didn’t need the DC license to generate another game, but it’s hard to say it’s not better for it.
Mechanically speaking, Scribblenauts Unmasked carries a bit of Scribblenauts’ usual clumsiness. The constant and repeating process of creating objects, modifying them with an adjective, attaching them to Maxwell and then either commanding Maxwell to attack or right-click a target borders on tedious repetition. The end result of watching whose health diminishes faster isn’t much of a satisfying reward either. In totality it’s a victory, which is good, but outside of highly specific instances of cross universe weirdness, Scribblenauts Unmasked doesn’t function much differently from past iterations of the franchise.
It’s those specialized, seemingly spontaneous sequences where Scribblenauts Unmasked thrives. It’s when your downed creations are turned into ghosts and then Maxwell dies and his ghost joins the fray. It’s the special quest where you offer to help someone beat a videogame and Scribblenauts Unmasked inexplicably shifts its art and music to Game Boy styled graphics. It’s when you try to create and use Superman and then Scribblenauts Unmasked asks you to pick between fifteen different iterations of Superman. These moments of pure unpredictability are as delightful as they are surprising, and it’s one of the few instances where Scribblenauts Unmasked transcends its mechanical trappings and ventures into territory thoroughly unexplored by past games in the series.
Of course, the other half of the appeal is engaging the wealth of DC related content. As an uneducated savage in regard to the burgeoning DC universe, I wasn’t exactly in a position to appreciate wide breadth of available content. I explored and employed it as best I could (thanks to the aforementioned Batcomputer), but I’m still a long way from years of dedication required for a complete embrace. And that’s ok. Scribblenauts Unmasked doesn’t require vast knowledge of the DC Comics from the player, but it’s especially effective for super fans of that world. The cutesy attitude may function as a deterrent, sure, but either younger players or those who simply appreciate the enormous amount of content have something to gain by making their way through the game.
