Video Game Review: Drawn to Life -- The Next Chapter

I don't know what it is about great new concepts for video games that produces horrible sequels.
It happened with the idea of a person who used the Force to its fullest extent in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. It happened again (although technically this game was released first) with the concept of drawing parts of your game world in Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter.

Now, before I continue, I have to explain that there are two games with this title, one for the Wii and one for the DS. I never played the one for the Wii because it's even harder to draw on the Wii than it is on a DS, and from what I read on Wikipedia, it has little to do with the story of the other two games. So, I will ignore this game and review the one for the DS.

Believe it or not, this game has exactly the same trouble as Force Unleashed II: despite great gameplay, it features one of the worst stories I have ever seen in any medium ever. I'll start with the positive aspects first. The gameplay is vastly improved from the first game. The drawing system is much better because now there is a template for everything you are asked to draw (but you can still recolor or reshape them to customize them but still fit in with the rest of the game world), and I'm pretty sure that you now have a much larger range of colors to use. The fighting system is much better as well. Early on, Isaac the shopkeeper offers to give you one of three weapons for free: a "slasher" (a sword), a "shooter" (a gun), and a "swinger" (or something like that; honestly, I don't know because this yo-yo based weapon is completely useless and I can't think of any time when I thought "YES! This is the time to break out the swinger!").

You can upgrade these weapons (and buy the others and their upgrades) at Isaac's shop, and unlike in the other game where the "upgrades" turn out to make your weapon worse, these upgrades are actually good. The sword upgrades give you sword combos to use, and once you have bought one or two of them you can run forward constantly swinging your sword (making anyone who doesn't use projectiles completely ineffective against you), the gun upgrades allow you to shoot faster, and the yo-yo upgrades . . . give you more range of motion? I honestly don't know -- like I said, this weapon is completely useless.

OK, I know you are waiting for the inevitable rant about the story, so here goes. Tell you what, I will tell you the entire story, from beginning to end, and you can tell me whether or not it makes any sense to you. (Warning: Many, many spoilers ahead.)

Well, at the beginning you are asked to answer some cryptic questions, and then we get into the story itself. We see Heather, one of the random minor characters from the first game, go up to the beach in the middle of the night and find a treasure chest. I guess I should explain that Heather is a little Raposa girl who is sort of like Two Face, and half of her face is black like Wilfre's. Why? Uhhh . . . OOH! Look over there! Seriously, though, it is never explained, nor is it even explained whether or not this actually has any significance, but I decided to include this just in case you can get anything out of it (although I seriously doubt it).

Anyway, she pulls a scepter out of the chest and we hear evil laughter. We then cut to Jowee, who is taking care of Heather, and is confused because she disappeared in the middle of the night. Mari, who is now the mayor, heads to the Hall of Creation to ask for the Hero back to find her. Seriously? You can't just look? You have to call in the Creator and his Hero just to find a kid who wandered off? Do they do this for everything? "Oh no! I lost my keys! To the Hall of Creation!" This is further proof that the Raposa are one of the laziest groups of people in video games.

Well, before you can draw the Hero, the drawing screen falls apart! Cutting back to the regular world, you watch as everything in the Hall of Creation loses its color. Mari and Jowee leave and watch in horror as the outside of the Hall loses its color as well. Then, Wilfre shows up. Oh my goodness! He . . . somehow . . . came back from the dead? HOW!? Well, like just about everything in this story, we never find out, and no one even brings up the question, or if they do it is quickly ignored.

Wilfre reveals that now he is out to drain all of the color from the world! Why? I don't know? Actually, Wilfre is asked on a number of occasions why he is doing this, but he always says "You don't understand." Yeah, I don't understand, because YOU WON'T TELL ME ANYTHING!!! Anyway, Wilfre gloats some more before brandishing the scepter from earlier, and summons a bunch of portals, which suck up most of the townspeople. As he gets pulled into another portal we see that Wilfre is manifesting himself through Heather! Before she gets pulled into the portal, Heather cries out for help and drops a pendant, which Jowee notices. OH MY GOODNESS!! Heather's pendant! Her trademark ever since . . . 5 seconds ago! Anyway, the rest of the village begins to lose its color, and the remaining 5 or so Raposa retreat to the docks. There, the Creator sends a gigantic turtle/village/boat to save them. I would complain about the deus ex machina, but this is actually a minor point compared to the rest of the story (which is saying something because I hate deus ex machinas).

Here I'm going to complain about the characters in this story. What's even worse than the fact that the characters are annoying, is the fact that this story focuses on the most minor characters from the previous game. Apart from Mari, Jowee, and Isaac, none of the other characters really did anything in the other game. There's the pirate, who is just around to pilot the turtle/village/boat, a Raposa who speakslikethisandnevereverputsaspaceinbetweenwords, Isaac's daughter (who I'm not sure even had a name in the first game), and Mike, a person who claims to be from a different world, which is backed up by the fact that he looks more like a human than a Raposa. Believe it or not, the entire story of this game actually revolves around Mike, who was arguably the most insignificant character from the first game.

Anyway, Mari finds another Hall of Creation, complete with heroic mannequin. So, we get a new hero and move on to the first levels. In this game, you are not required to find anything in the levels, but they contain money, color drops (more on those later), a single missing Raposa (although there is no point to finding them), and a gigantic coin, which the game claims will give you something if you find all of them, but I don't know if that's actually true.

Jowee uses Heather's pendant to lead them to Wilfre (yeah, it has the power to shoot lasers at maps), and the group arrives at a musical village which has also been drained of color. There you find a Raposa named Sock (so named because he wears a huge sock hat), who claims to be the sole escapee from a village which met a similar fate. You travel through a couple of levels finding color drops, which allow you to color in parts of the village and unlock new levels. Eventually you meet the mayor of this village, who has lost her voice, therefore causing the village to fall into ruin. Yes, I'm dead serious. The village's very existence is based on the mayor's ability to sing, which is passed on from generation to generation. It turns out that the mayor made a bet with a mysterious Raposa named Salem. The bet was that she could sing better, and if she lost her voice would go into a seashell or something. So, the mayor, a person entrusted with the well being of the village, bet the very existence of the village itself on whether or not she was a good singer. WHY IS SHE IN CHARGE!? Later on they say that Salem cheated, but never say how, so I am forced to conclude that this is typical Raposa whining. Anyway, you hunt down the seashell and restore the mayor's voice. Actually, though, she decides the same thing I did, that she is unfit to rule and that her 5-year-old son would do a better job. She plans to throw a party that night where she will pass on her voice and then die (yeah, if the mayor loses their ability to sing they die, but she was perfectly healthy 10 minutes ago). Mari doesn't think that this is a good idea, but the mayor asks all of you to stay on your ship during the party. Fortunately you ignore her because Salem (who, what a surprise, is Wilfre) tries the direct approach, but you (the Hero) fall out of the sky and attack his monsters. Meanwhile, the passing on of the voice is stopped by the Creator, who has decided that the mayor's time has not yet come.

With evil defeated here, our heroes leave for the next place that the pendant leads to. However, halfway over, Mari disappears, leaving our heroes confused because now one of them actually has to take responsibility. The second world is a mining town run by the despotic King Miney (that's not a nickname, that's his actual name). We learn from his brother, however, that he was not always like this, but used his mining robots to enslave the populace after he became friends with Salem. So, you basically start a rebellion, drive most of the robots insane, and yet somehow peace reigns. Basically the only reason that this world is at all important is because we see Mari walking around in the uncolored regions of the town, and she runs away when she sees us.

The third world is a space tyranny, with rules and paperwork unlike anything ever known (someone gets jailed for sneezing without first filling out the proper forms), but it contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, and mostly serves as a time for everyone to whine while I do the dirty work, so I'm going to move on now.

Anyway, after beating that world, the pendant is surprisingly uncooperative, and Sock asks to see it. He promptly throws it overboard to prevent us from following Wilfre. Why? Because Sock is actually Wilfre! This was obviously supposed to be a plot twist, but it's not that surprising because Sock was even whinier than normal Raposa and did nothing but suggest returning home and giving up. Jowee has given up all hope until he sees the Raposawhotalkslikethis, who has been acting as the ship's sail (he holds up a bed sheet), holding Sock's hat, which had been left behind. However, Jowee notices that the hat is pointing in the opposite direction of the wind, so they follow it to Wilfre's stronghold.

There we learn that Mari is actually working for Wilfre now (and also refuses to tell us Wilfre's motives), and takes Jowee away to show him why. I'm finding this hard to buy, however, since she was Wilfre's most vocal opponent. Meanwhile, the Mayor (from the first game, Mari's dad) shows up like Obi-Wan in The Empire Strikes Back and tells you to travel through the pieces of previous worlds that have formed Wilfre's twisted world. Why did Wilfre do this? I don't know! I don't even know what his plan is! Every time someone asks what he's doing or why he's doing something, he says "You don't understand." Again, YES BECAUSE YOU WON'T TELL ANYONE!!!

After unlocking the path to Wilfre's inner sanctum, Mari and Jowee come out to tell everyone that Wilfre is in fact right, and that everything is Mike's fault. WHAT!? WHY IS IT HIS FAULT!? HOW IS IT HIS FAULT!? HE HASN'T DONE ANYTHING!? However, everyone changes their minds and follows you instead for no apparent reason, and you go off to kill Wilfre. At first this is impossible because he uses the scepter to kill you, and proclaims that "the perfect storm is at hand" before blasting the lifeless mannequin. However, the Creator literally says "LET THERE BE COLOR" and the Hero comes back to life and cuts the scepter in half (even if he has a gun equipped). Wilfre pulls out the Book of Life, however, and makes a gigantic cloud/throne thing to attack you with. (Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that Wilfre has the Book of Life because Mari had it and gave it to him. If you think that that important information like this should have had more attention paid to it, trust me, that's about as much attention as the game gives it.)

So, you kill Wilfre, get Heather back, and return to the village. Then you (the Creator) tap the Eternal Flame and everyone disappears except for Mike. Okay . . . Then everything turns dark and Heather repeats the cryptic questions and answers you gave from the beginning of the game. You then watch the credits and see a bunch of pictures which sort of, kind of, not really explain the story. You see a car get into a wreck and a kid that looks kinda like Mike unconscious on a hospital bed, with a girl that looks kinda like a human, older version of Heather with bandages over half of her face sitting next to his bed, and two stuffed animals that look like Jowee and Mari. He wakes up, they are happy, blah, blah, blah.

This story makes no sense. I guess the implication is that the entire game world was in the kid's (who is supposed to be Mike) head, and that when he woke up it disappeared. That would probably make him the Creator too, but some things don't make sense. In this case, who is Wilfre? Why does he hate the Creator (the kid) so much? What about Heather, who is obviously based on the kid's sister? In the real world the sister is older, and anyway, how would the kid know that she had bandages on half of her face (obviously supposed to be the explanation for Heather's black face), since he was knocked out the entire time and would have no way of knowing. Nothing is stated explicitly, and what I can figure out doesn't make any sense.

I tried running this game by my buddy Continuity, but he just broke down weeping uncontrollably after the first world, so no luck there. In all, while the gameplay was greatly improved, and I liked all of the changes that were made, the story is filled with even more holes than the first one, the characters are even more annoying (the Mayor's cameo is satisfying but short), and in all I HATE THIS GAME!! And if you don't believe me, go to GameStop or Best Buy and tell me if you find a new copy of this game that isn't packaged with the original game.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that you won't find a single one.