Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter Preview
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter Preview
By Gaetano Prestia
After a successful appearance on the DS, Drawn to Life is finally coming to the Wii. Questions were asked as to why a version wasn’t originally made for the console considering its control waggling abilities and gamer demographic. The idea seemed like a match made in heaven, and when Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter was announced, it was met with plenty of excitement and hype.
That excitement and hype doesn’t seem to have been generated in vain, as The Next Chapter looks set to be a wonderful entry in the franchise. Anyone familiar with the original title will feel right at home with the gameplay and fantastic platforming elements, as the Wii version offers just as much challenge and accessibility as the DS version.
While the drawing gameplay isn’t quite as accurate with the Wii-mote as it is on the DS touch-screen with the stylus, there’s still plenty of room to move around in and come up with some outrageous items and buildings for the environments.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Drawn to Life, the basic gist is that you progress through a world that has been attacked by an evil no-good villain. With your own specially created hero, you move through each world, drawing in aspects of the environment that have been erased. Everything from butterflies to spiders and bridges, the world needs you to bring out your best creative juices to make the world alive and kicking again.
If the Wii version has anything over the DS version, it’s the improvement in the gameplay physics. When you’re creating your character, you can move the limbs around the body and create a hideous, deformed creature that is ironically the world’s only hope for survival. This is where a lot of Drawn to Life’s charm comes from, as the game really encourages you to just be as wild and creative as possible without being a perfectionist. It doesn’t really matter if the sun in the sky isn’t perfect, as a silly sun with a smile is a lot more fun than just a simple sun template.
On that note, if you’re embarrassed by your drawing abilities and still can’t see the fun in putting your horrendous drawing abilities on show to the world, there are plenty of templates available to you for each thing you need to draw. If you want the world to look as perfect as possible, then you can either spend a while trying to draw perfect recreations of each thing, or simply use the template that the game offers. Furthermore, you can also edit and add in your own touches to the templates to add a sense of your own creative juices to the world.
As you progress through the game new items will be made available to you, so if you do create some buildings that aren't quite up to your standard, you can swap them for something a little more simple and nice from the template options.
The platforming elements are fantastic and the fusion with the drawing elements really making for a challenging and thoroughly enjoyable experience. You move your character using the nunchuck and Wii-mote and press A once or twice to jump and double-jump respectively. Early in the game you’ll be using a simple kick and/or punch as the main form of combat, but some levels have specific weapons available to you to combat enemies and animals you’ll come across.
As you move through the worlds you’ll notice different coloured boxes that represent things that need to be drawn in. Items in the environment – such as animals and other things that add a bit of personality to the world – are represented by a black box and are mostly optional. Blue boxes allow you to create floating platforms to jump up to otherwise unreachable areas, while a red box will allow you to draw in a physics-based shape that moves depending on its shape.
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter maintains much of the charm from the original title while implementing a few new gameplay features and impressive physics within the environment. It’s still a lot of fun to draw things in and help liven up the environment, and it’s hilarious to see some absolutely hideously drawn objects around the place. When you couple all of these aspects with some impressive platforming elements, you have a title that is definitely one to look forward to on the Wii.
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