uDraw Gametablet with uDraw Studio Score: 88% Developer: THQ Device Type: Controller

Function: The uDraw Gametablet with uDraw Studio is a peripheral that would have seemed like magic not that long ago. Even having had a year to marvel at the iPad and the Kinect, uDraw Gametablet still feels pretty cool. It does for the Xbox 360 what Wacom has been doing for years with personal computers, serving a design need that traditional input devices can't meet. If you've ever tried sketching on-screen with a mouse (or worse yet, a controller), you'll know what we mean. uDraw Gametablet represents an affordable alternative to tablet-drawing systems that cost almost as much as a full Xbox 360, if not more. The software that accompanies the uDraw Gametablet, uDraw Studio, makes it extremely simple to jump in and start creating. The capabilities of the uDraw Gametablet are showcased through a few simple modes, including Art School, Art Play, and Art Camp. As you get into Art Camp Mode, you find that the uDraw Gametablet also includes a basic gyroscope that lets you play tilt-games. When you're engaged in some creative mode, the basic controls revolve around quickly selecting from your Drawing Toolbox (B), Brushstroke Options (X), and Color Picker (Y). The (A) button is used to select from menus, and in some modes can be pushed to simulate pressing pen-to-paper. The other method used to draw involves a stylus attached to the device, held in either your left or right hand. The controls mentioned above can be customized to make things a bit easier for you, depending on which hand you use to draw. Like any self-respecting tablet, the uDraw Gametablet uses pinch gestures to zoom, and offers a two-finger pan once you're zoomed in on a piece of art. Beyond the hardware and the game, you have the option to save original art to an online gallery for viewing, but only if you register first and claim your account using a code that links to your device and console. You don't have to publish everything, just pieces you select that you'd like to share with the world, but this is a nice way to stress the fact that uDraw Gametablet with uDraw Studio is all about user-generated content.

Performance: uDraw Studio does about as good a job as any game could, featuring the hardware it accompanies. We can imagine how long-term, the uDraw Gametablet will work well with board games, or traditional games that could benefit from interaction that isn't possible using a traditional controller. That said, uDraw Studio is really the perfect introduction to this technology. During Art School you get to try out 15 lessons, including several on color, a segment on landscape painting, and various character sketches. Once you graduate from school, Art Play gives you a chance to doodle on one of 11 surfaces, and Art Camp hosts six really fun activities, including a paint-by-number feature, games that leverage the tilt features, plus coloring book pages that will placate even your youngest kiddies. As you are working on these masterpieces, you can save them to a gallery for later viewing. The stylus included with the uDraw Gametablet is necessary for detail work, but a finger works quite well. Young kids will prefer the finger-method for its simplicity. The action required to make a mark when you're not using the stylus varies from one mode to another, which can be confusing. In some areas you need to press and hold (A) to keep the ink flowing, while in others it seems to be in constant drawing mode when you use a finger instead of the stylus. The stylus is designed to respond to pressure, so you use it as both a pointing device (lightly moving across the drawing area) and a marking device when you press more firmly. The pad that accepts input is interesting, because it is mapped to the screen in such a way that touching the right side of the pad will always put you on the right side of the screen. This prevents you from feeling like you have to constantly "scroll" using the stylus to get to the far sides of the pad, but it takes some getting used to when you've had mouse movements drilled into you for years.

Features: Lightweight Interactive Pressure Sensitive Stylus Features Pinch And Stretch Capabilities Wireless Support For Xbox 360 Tilt-Sensors For In-Game Controls Requires 3 AA Batteries

Drawbacks & Problems:: If you've messed around with drawing programs on iPad, you'll know that they are pretty limited in scope, but with very solid controls. You have very little resistance or delay when working with art programs on tablets, which is how we imagine the Wacom devices feel. uDraw Gametablet doesn't have but so many games that feature full device integration currently, but if uDraw Studio is any indication, the future looks bright. A few quirks that we noticed, which may be chalked up to the software, are that the pinch and pan are hard to separate. When attempting to use the two-finger pan as advertised, we found it was not sensitive enough to register very small increments diagonally, but did fine with up/down, left/right controls. The drawing controls felt solid with one finger, so the double-finger control issues are likely a fluke that will be ironed out. Cord storage for the stylus could be a problem. The hard part was obviously making a cord long enough to give you drawing room, without forcing you to dodge the cord when using a finger to control that action, or storing the stylus for one of the Art Camp games. We wonder about the durability of the stylus after going in and out of the holder... Grabbing it by the cord is likely to have repercussions at some point, but the connection points all seemed solid from what we could feel. Sensitivity of the pad in some areas (bottom) was questionable at times, but this could again be chalked up to software rather than hardware. As tablets go, uDraw Gametablet is a very niche device that stands in for incredibly expensive hardware from companies like Wacom, that cater primarily to designers. Familiar and kids with an Xbox 360 will really enjoy the uDraw Gametablet with uDraw Studio, and the promise of future games for the peripheral are what we find exciting. As a tech demo, uDraw Studio is better than average, but we can't wait to see what cool uses developers come up with once the installed base for the uDraw Gametablet is out there!

-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock

Related Links: Buy uDraw Gametablet with uDraw Studio on Amazon