![]() ![]() ![]() An early example is a bridge in the Raposa Village. When the game does ask you to create something integral to the gameplay, it's fairly crude in the ways it incorporates it. Too many of the game's key visual elements are locked off, out of reach, leaving you to merely scribble in the margins. These accumulate over the game, so that the game's visual style slowly becomes your own, but even so, it's hard to muster the enthusiasm to painstakingly craft a tiny butterfly or toucan's beak that will only ever appear a few pixels high on-screen as you trot past. For one thing, most of the time you're being asked to draw completely pointless background details. With your elbow braced against the arm of a chair, and a steadying hand on the wrist, it is eventually possible to produce coherent images that aren't mortifyingly embarrassing, but the game never really justifies the effort required. It's no Photoshop, but the drawing tool is reasonably flexible provided you have a steady hand. The drawing tools are surprisingly sophisticated, but producing something worthwhile is still fiddly and it's too tempting to save time and opt instead for the pre-designed templates, which instantly shame whatever crude doodle you were attempting. Needless to say, holding the Wii remote aloft like a dart and doodling in thin air fails to produce the same instinctive penmanship. The previous game's sketchpad was a little clunky, but at least you were holding a tangible pen-shaped object and drawing on a physical surface. With its stylus, the DS is obviously well-suited to a game that involves drawing items directly into the game. One of the most immediate issues is the Wii itself. As tempting as that sounds, the structure of the game is such that there's rarely much point in doing so. That innovation, as with the last game, is that you can draw some of the objects and characters that will populate the game. There's nothing wrong with a little adherence to formula, of course, but the problem with Drawn to Life has always been that its uninspired construction isn't elevated by the vague stabs at innovation elsewhere. The rotund inhabitants of the hub world Raposa Village - a sort of cut-price Animal Crossing - are once again menaced by a mysterious villain, whose scheme involves taking the precious things of the village and hiding them at convenient intervals at the end of numerous themed stages. The plot, such as it is, echoes the last game very closely while the gameplay fits snugly into the same old mould. Sequel is perhaps a misleading term, since in many respects this is more like a slightly enhanced remake. Two years on and this sequel brings the series to the Wii for the first time, but sadly falls into the same trap despite addition of several new elements. The original Drawn to Life was based around an interesting idea, half-heartedly realised in the guts of a mediocre platform game. ![]()
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