Doodle God: Ultimate Edition Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Doodle God: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One)

Saturday, February 18, 2017.
by Brent Roberts

Have you ever seen a sporting legend that stayed in their profession for longer than they should have? Someone unwilling to succumb to the truth that they are now in the twilight of their time and should gracefully step out of the spotlight and enjoy life, yet they soldier on. Doodle God does the same thing, except it's not sporting or an a legend. In fact, JoyBits is charging $9.99 for something that is so simplistic a monkey could play it, and that's probably because they would be the only ones to pay $9.99 for this game. Listen, I know I'm supposed to have an open mind for all games, but Doodle God is 7 years old. Let me repeat that: Doodle God is 7 years old. $10 for a 7-year-old game? Hmm... That got me thinking...

What in the world was JoyBits thinking? OK, for starters the game itself is about you doing one thing over and over again, which is combining two items to make more items, so on and so forth. You play a version of God who must develop and populate a planet that is in front of you. Apparently you're armed with the elements of earth, wind, fire and water. From here you literally have to open one option on the left side, and one on the right side. From there you use the Left Stick and the Right Stick to select the two various items you want to combine. If you fail, and you will countless times, then the game will simply give you an error buzz, and you continue on. If successful though, you will see an uneventful animation of the two tiles colliding and producing a new and different tile. From this new tile, you get to recombine it with everything else ALL OVER AGAIN, to see if you can make one more tile.

That's it. That's essentially all you do, matching tile after tile in boring repetition to the point where I actually caught myself drifting off to sleep, because when you take all the bells and whistles outta this game, it literally boils down to selecting one menu on the left and side, then open every single menu on the right hand side, and go through the combination process of every tile in every single menu on the right hand side. The process is so monotonous that the game tries to give you side quests and missions to do such as "make ice" or "make a mushroom", and quests like "rescue a princess from a dragon." That last quest I mention requires you to start with a limited amount of menu selections, where you must do MORE combining to fill out the rest of your squares, thus raising your completion percentage at the top left corner, and once it reaches 100% then you're complete with the mission.

To break up the tediousness of doing nothing but combining, the game breaks it up by giving you more options to do nothing more but, you guessed it, combining. Now normally I'd go off and tell you more about the control scheme and what does what, but there's literally no point in doing so as the rest of the buttons are incredibly redundant and pointless. Case in point, there's the X button to give you a hint. That's fantastic. Or you can just start making every combination possible and you'll essentially make all the hints worthless, but there is a dedicated button should you require that unnecessary hint. Using the Left and Right Triggers open menus on both sides, and you'll press the A button a lot. Remember the old Xbox videos showing that the controllers are tested in a facility and they show the buttons being pressed over and over again in rapid succession? That's you when you're playing this $10 game.

The graphics do look decent on the Xbox One, but that's not saying much for a mobile game that's nearly a decade old. Of course it's going to look better, but sadly it doesn't do anything to help cure the boredom of endless mind numbing combining. There is music in the game, but I'm unsure why. All you'll hear is the haunting sound of the error "buzzer" when you miss a combination. There is an adult setting for the game, the reason being is that apparently during the text that you read there's cursing and other "adult" ideas such as making vodka.

I have to sadly dive back into the whole combining nature and tell you that in the first stage of your development there are just shy of 250 elements you must make through combinations. Let that number sink in, then think of all the menus and all the options, all the button presses, and all the errors with an accompanying sound. When you get finished with that there's new modes, and guess what you get to do there? Yet even MORE combining.

In my opinion, this game shouldn't be called Doodle God, it should be called "match boxes together in a mildly mentally challenged state of mind until you either get so bored you quit the game, fall asleep, or just go do something else that's more productive". I think that wouldn't quite fit in the title area though so I guess Doodle God it is then.

I'm sorry, normally I'd carry on about a game whether or not it's good or bad, but I think it's pretty obvious at this point. If this game is a penny over $4.99 it feels like theft, pure and simple, so imagine how we feel about the $10 price point. If you're that hard up for literally one of the most repetitive matching games you'll ever experience feel free to pick it up, but when you feel that overwhelming sadness for having wasted $10 on something that now is the cause of your severe case of the boredoms, don't say I didn't warn you.

Overall: 5.0 / 10
Gameplay: 3.0 / 10
Visuals: 6.0 / 10
Sound: 4.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Doodle God: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One)

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