Scribblenauts is an amazing tool for entertainment, while at the same time being the most frustrating thing you have ever laid your hands upon. It's all been written before, so I'll save you all of that. I won't write about how amazing it is to be able to solve a puzzle using a UFO to lift a cow out of the way of traffic, and I won't write about the amount of times I cursed trying to get that to work.
No, instead, I am putting Scribblenauts to the test. You see, I had this idea for an article on the game, where I would hit random letters and see what kind of word I had never heard of came up as a suggestion for what I meant to spell with my jibberish. When doing that, I quickly realized that most words I have never heard of, turned out to be some strange pastry, or some strange bird.
Not knowing any pastry experts, I decided to go to my brother Aaron. He has an environmental science degree, and has been participating in bird related activities the last few years. Counting them, or something, I don't really know. But the point is the man knows his birds, so he should be able to put Scribblenauts to the test.
What were the results?
Bird - Crested CaracaraThe Scribblenauts system took out the 'Crested' part of the name, but according to Aaron the appearance was accurate. I'm not exactly sure how much, as "Sure, yeah." wasn't very descriptive, but accurate enough I suppose.
Bird - Bird of ParadiseI told him to pick something more unique this time. Something that wouldn't have a generic type that Scribblenauts could exploit like caracara. I was informed at that point that Crested Caracara is pretty unique and if there are multiple types that it's only a few *cough* Bird Nerd! *cough*. Still, I was given Bird of Paradise, which sort of made me wary. I kind of expected the game to just remove 'of Paradise' and give us a generic bird. Surprisingly though, it gave us a Bird of Paradise that looked "Sure, yeah" accurate.
Bird - Golden Cheeked WarblerWhen given this suggestion, I'm pretty sure he still hadn't figured the game out. I knew it was going to give us a generic warbler instead of the specific one that he had stated. Sure enough, generic warbler we got. "The colors are all wrong" was his response. "Well, it just gave us a generic warbler. It took out Golden Cheeked." I could see him starting to get into this little game I had created for him.
Bird - American RedstartLike I said, he was getting into it. An American Redstart is apparently a kind of warbler, but it doesn't have warbler in the name. He was trying to test the game. I'm not sure if he thought the game would still give us a warbler, or if he was hoping it wouldn't have any response, but it was neither of those scenarios. It did indeed have an American Redstart, and the colors and appearance were sufficiently accurate.
Blue-Footed BoobyHe was really trying at this point to think of unique and obscure birds that Scribblenauts couldn't cheat with. There was no way the game could simplify this name, the ESRB would have gone crazy. It would either have it or not. It had it. Beaten again, we regrouped.
Bird - HoatzinThis was our final chance to beat the game without it just cheating it's way out of answering our questions. He was really thinking. He mentioned something like Quezacotl, which I recognized as that mythical bird from Final Fantasy games. I looked up the correct way to spell it and informed him, but apparently he wasn't looking for the mythical bird. Either way, the game didn't have it, which he wasn't surprised by but for a game that has Cuthulhu, not having Quezacotl is a fail in my book. The bird he apparently was thinking of was a Hoatzin, which the game did have. So I guess I'll count this as we kind of beat the game, but not really.
So there you have it. I like to think we won against Scribblenauts in this odd game I've thought up. Sure, it had every single bird that my bird expert could think of, but it cheated several times. And not having Quezacotl is failing in some sort of way, I just can't think of what.
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