Scribblenauts Review
Scribblenauts
DS Nintendo game reviews
“stimulate your creativity and delight you”
Pros : A ridiculous number of objects and animals that behave realistically, puzzles that can be finished in many different ways, Loads of stages and great level creator, Surprises and amazes with the overwhelming breadth of possibilities.
Cons : Serious control issues, Sometimes frustrate objectives.
There are very few games in which the biggest obstacle that stands between you and success is the limitation of your own imagination. In Scribblenauts, you have access to thousands of objects that can be summoned at any point using the in-game keyboard, and your goal is to push the boundaries of your creativity and vocabulary to solve the puzzles in whatever fanciful way you dream up. There are an untold number items, such as musical instruments, vehicles, prehistoric animals, cooking utensils, and deities at your disposal, and placing all these disparate pieces onscreen at one time and seeing how they behave and react to one another is outrageously fun. However, as entertaining as it may be to chase a monocle-wearing walrus across the desert on the back of the Loch Ness Monster, the crazy dynamics are not without problems. Many levels don’t force you to push the boundaries of your creativity, level objectives are sometimes unclear, and the finicky controls will lead to a number of unceremonious deaths. But the overwhelming joy of this innovative puzzle game is able to overcome those issues, providing a jubilant experience that is sure to delight.
The premise to this puzzle game is to complete puzzles to collect a “starite.” You do this by using the stylus to write nouns to help you complete your objective. A simple example would be a level where the starite is separate from you by a moat. You could write “bridge” and a bridge would appear. Place it over the moat, walk over to the starite, and you’ve just completed the level. While that sounds very simplistic and like a boring example, that is because the solution you chose is simplistic and boring, and you will be scored accordingly. The game’s tagline: “Write Anything, Solve Everything,” refers to the ability to almost literally write ANYTHING. One of the first things that will amaze you upon starting this game, is how virtually unlimited the Scribblenauts dictionary is. The dictionary contains an amazing 22,802 words.
The best part of Scribblenauts is using the massive dictionary to come up with all sorts of wacky ideas. Sure, you could ride a horse from one side of the screen to the other, but why settle for something so mundane? If you have a saddle and a mind-control device handy, you can summon Cthulhu to be your noble steed. When a herd of dinosaurs are bumming you out, you can call forth a superhero to put them in their place, infantilize them with a shrink ray, or just drop a meteor from the sky to trigger a convenient extinction-level event. This creativity is present in the many puzzles as well. In one level, you must transport three deceased criminals from the purgatory in which they currently reside to the pearly gates of heaven. You could construct a bridge between the two eternal planes, but why go through that trouble when an all-forgiving god will absolve them of their sins and transport them to the promised land?
Just about everything in Scribblenauts is controlled with the stylus, and though you will usually be able to do what you want, a few issues crop up that will mess with your enjoyment. The most troubling issue involves basic movement. Maxwell moves wherever you tap the screen, and while it’s a cinch to position him right at a cliff’s edge or hover over a Tyrannosaurus rex in your helicopter, it’s too easy to accidentally move him into harm’s way. Because you are constantly tapping the screen to interact with objects, you can mistakenly order Maxwell to move, making him run into a pit of lava when you were trying to place a bridge over it instead. Furthermore, using a rope to attach two objects together, such as tethering a penguin to a hang glider so it can finally taste flight, is a real pain. The ultraprecision needed to connect these two objects is too unforgiving. These control issues can be overcome with a bit of patience, but these small problems can lead to more than a few deaths along the way.
There is a lot of content in Scribblenauts. With more than 200 levels to plow through, it will take puzzle veterans quite a few hours to see everything on offer. You get bonus points for completing levels with style, and you can earn a gold star if you reach an objective in three completely different ways.
Even though I harp on the clunky controls, I’m still a huge Scribblenauts fan and fully believe that, even with Maxwell’s awkwardness, this game is one of the top titles on the Nintendo DS platform. The game is enormous fun as an interactive toy, a sandbox for players to simply muck around outside of the normal progression, and the puzzles themselves can be challenging and encourage some wild thought processes.
Gamespot Score : 8.0
IGN Score : 8.7
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