Drawn To Life 2 Review

Coins can be spent on new templates, stamps and other unlockables.

The actual platforming is great, and, in some respects, even better than that of LittleBigPlanet. Although it's basic, it feels tight and pixel perfect, which is an impressive achievement for a physics-based platformer. Crucially, when you die from falling into a pit, or lose health from an attack from an enemy, it's because you messed up. Thankfully there's absolutely no waggling at all. Movement is governed by the Nunchuck control stick, jumping is triggered by the A button and you can melee attack with B. It's depressing that Wii games should be praised for NOT employing waggling, but these be the days we live in.

Unfortunately for all its good work, the game's let down by some frustrating annoyances that, really, shouldn't have made the cut. Every time you interact with an easel you have to endure a lengthy loading screen. It gets annoying fast, and plucks you out of the experience. Load times in general are too long, and sometimes poorly placed: in one level the game loaded as the camera panned down from one area to another.

And the actual drawing is woefully inaccurate and disappointingly basic. Keeping the Wii Remote steady enough for accurate sketching is impossible. Even something as simple as a circle or a rectangular box ends up looking like some kind of mutated blob. Because of this problem, which is as much a fault of the Wii itself as it is the game, it's hard to make creations look anywhere near as good as the pre-made templates.

Another thing: the hub, Raposa Village, is a boring, pointless place. After clearing a stage you're transported back to the village. This would be fine if there was something interesting to do there. But there isn't. The only reason it exists is to have you jump through a hoop: to start the next stage you have to talk to the relevant cute local. As you walk towards the NPC, mindlessly pushing the Nunchuck control stick, you think, 'all I want to do is get on with the game'.

A brain surgeon's hands wouldn't be steady enough to recreate this template.

At the end of the day, Drawn to Life doesn't quite fit the billing. It's not the Wii's LittleBigPlanet. Nor does it offer the creative freedom of Scribblenauts, but it is a fun, quality platformer that's more challenging than its cute, Klonoa-esque exterior suggests. It's too hard for young children, but everyone else should enjoy it, even disillusioned hardcore Wii owners.