The Lord of the Rings: Aragon’s Quest

At the WB booth I was first shown The Lord of the Rings: Aragon’s Quest for the Wii.  It is the tale of Aragon’s rise to power as told by Samwise to his children.  The game is very easy to control.  Swinging the remote swings your sword in different directions, while swinging the nunchuck will allow you to thrust forward with your shield to knock away enemies.  

A second player can join in at any time, not interrupting player one’s game, in order to control the wizard Gandalf to direct his attacks and spells on the screen, rather than controlling the actual character’s movements.  Player 2 can exit at any time to allow player 1 to continue on his own.  

Other weapons are available for your use such as torches to burn through blockades and arrows to attack far off enemies.  A nice touch added to the arrows is that you can lock on to several enemies and then fire off several shots automatically.  The graphics have an almost cartoonish look for the cast with all of the armor and weapons shining brightly in the light.  

The game controls well and has a cast of familiar characters following you on your quest.  Fans of the books and movies should be very pleased with this one.  It will hit stores this fall.

Aragon’s Quest (The DS Version)

I also had a demonstration of the DS version of this game while I was at WB’s booth.  It’s the same story and premise as the Wii version.  In this one though, you are limited to playing as Aragon only and none of his companions are active on the screen with him; though this is understandable due to the systems limitations.  
The graphics looked a little bit blurry to me, but to be fair, this could have been because I was watching the demonstration on a TV and not the actual DS itself. 

An interesting choice was made with the control setup in that the stylus is not used at all.  The entire game is controlled with the face buttons.  I like this choice as too many games on the DS and the Wii also are too gimmicky forcing you to touch or waggle just for the sake of having it when a button press would have just as easily sufficed.  The same types of weapons are available in the DS edition and they seemed to control as easily as they do on the Wii.

Scribblenauts

This game by far was the showcase for WB’s DS offerings in my opinion.  You play as a character named Maxwell who has to navigate through worlds and obtain each levels starite.  The catch is, that in order to obtain the item in question, you must type in the word for items you need using the stylus.  For instance, in one level, the starite was tied to a rope and high out of my reach.  So I typed in jet pack, and wa-la, I had a jet pack to fly with.  Items can also be combined and range from the simple like ladders, to the unthinkable like summoning God to the screen.  In a hilarious moment, the WB rep had me summon God and the Devil onto the screen at the same time.  FYI, God won.

The graphics are simple and reminiscent of Drawn to Life.  All of the items you can summon are colorful and animated well.  As an added plus, if you happen to misspell a word, or type in a incompatible word with the game, a spell checker and suggestion box will appear to help you out.  Gamers of all ages should like Scribblenauts.  Don’t dismiss it as a kids’ game and check it out when it hits stores in the Fall.