Maximum Letdown: Marker Man Adventures (DS)

You might see this game in a Best Buy or Gamestop and you may be tempted to pick it up, wondering why I haven’t already featured it as a $20 GOTW. Before you do, you should know that there is a much better version of this game available on PC for the same price. It has better level design, a better save system, more responsive play control, a level editor, and an online community with custom content and high score lists. It’s called Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Marker Man adventures is a fusion of platforming and physics based puzzle gaming, but it doesn’t do either very well. You play as Marker Man, a stick figure out to find his dog Doodles. He can’t do much beside walk (very slowly) and jump, so you use the stylus to draw bridges and shapes to navigate. By drawing various shapes in motions, I activate the game’s power ups, such as breathing underwater and faster movement. Works good in theory, but the drawing is very unresponsive. I mean, having to draw a line 8 times before the game will register it and lay it down. Even worse, when I draw a shape, the system also misreads it, and I end up drawing a triangle when I wanted to draw a circle. Speaking of circles, they are the only way to deal with the game’s enemies. I can draw circles around them and push them around to keep them at bay, but the only way to deal with them permanently is to push them off cliffs.

The levels, though poorly designed offer several different solutions to replay them. Unfortunately, in the short amount of time I spent with the game, I found no way to select previously completed levels. There is no incentive to do so anyway, as there is no ranking, no scoring based on how you complete the levels, or no high score chart. Thankfully, the game takes care of that situation though, as my save file tends to get mysteriously set back to level 1. Combine this with some annoyingly haunting background tune (which seems to be the only music in the entire game), and what could have been a promising DS title ends up being an exercise in frustration and boredom.

In closing, if you must have a game like this, then just download Crayon Physics. If you must have a game like this on DS, then just cough up the extra $10 and grab Scribblenauts.