Drawn to Life (that is the name of a game)

At what point does a thing's dullness cancel out its endearing ways? (This is a cost/benefit analysis that I hope isn't performed too often on yours truliest here.) Drawn to Life – man, I got a lot of affection for the little platformer. It tries really hard to make the best of the DS and its unique potential. After a few hours, though, the novelty isn't enough to balance out that its gameplay is that of a platformer generic enough to be one of hundreds '90s shareware games (obvious exception: Commander Keen).

Don't let my intro rain too wet a blanket on this parade: its merits are strong enough to make it compulsively playable, and a good deal of fun. The main thing is you get to draw your character, as well as many other things in the game. You get a little template that shows you the boundaries of the character and where its little joints will bend (Todd McFarlane may want to note there are nine points of articulation). You then get to draw in a face, torso, and limbs with the stylus and around 16 or 24 different colors. You can make more than one template throughout the game: one of my characters is a confused purple duck, and another is a business man with an electrical socket face. You also get to draw, later on, their wings and their guns. (Don't worry, ESRB moms, the guns shoot acorns and snowballs, and your drawing doesn't show up large enough on the screen for it to look badass or threatening.)

The game explains that you draw the "hero" and other things in the town because you, as the player, are "The Creator" who has come to save the town from baddies. (It's up to you to determine whether the towns little mammalian inhabitants, the Raposa, are being blasphemous here.)

I suppose I was being a bit harsh earlier when I criticized the gameplay for being simple and generic (it reminds me of the Aladdin video game, of all things). It's the Raposa that make mild-manned me want to ANGRY and SMASH. Between levels, you go back to your town with the Raposa you've saved, and you're forced to do a lot of tedious running around by the little guys. "I think MINXY has stolen my FLOWERS. You need to talk to the MAYOR about this!" Even this wouldn't be so bad, if there were less of it. My breaking point was an inexcusable cutscene of a town concert wherein some pop-star Raposa performs a long and tedious rap about everything you did in every level up to that point. It's like a Greek chorus if they were retarded and you had to press "B" 67 times to get them to quit telling you what you just did.

Summary: if you can handle cutscenes, especially stupid ones, then you will have far fewer problems with this game than I did. If I was ten years old, I would definitely annoy my parents by recounting it in extreme detail during the rare moments I wasn't playing it.

(Note: I got this game from a friend, who got it because he found someone's DS (with this cartridge) at a record store. Moral: do not leave things at record stores. The employees are invariably a sausage party comprised of unscrupulous vultures.) (Record Store employees of the world: you know I love you guys. Mostly.)