Review: Scribblenauts

Imagine a game where you can think of an item, write it down on a pad of paper and it will show up on your screen. Need to kill someone? Draw a gun. Need to climb a wall? Draw a ladder. Well that game has arrived. Scribblenauts lets your imagination run wild. Never before have you had so much control in a game. Sound good to be true? It is. Scribblenauts may be just a little too ambitious.

The Story

Here’s one for ya, a game with no story line. You simply start playing. There’s no background as to what a “Scribblenaut” is, or how you have this power to scribble a word on a pad of paper and make it become a reality. It just happens. That’s not a bad thing. Stories for whacked out concepts like Scribblenauts are pretty ridiculous anyways, so the creators decided to cut the crap and just let you play.

The Gameplay

The idea is quite simple, Maxwell has to collect “Starites”. What are they? Glowing stars. There’s really no rhyme or reason as to why Maxwell has to collect them, he just does.

In order to collect Starites, you’ll have to solve some puzzles. Some are quite simplistic. Reunite a girl with her cat for example, or get a cow off the road so traffic can pass through. To do this you must type out words on a notepad and use the objects you create to help solve the puzzle.

Help the lumberjack knock the tree down! Will you use a chainsaw, a bomb, a rocket? The choice is yours!

Solutions can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. For example, to reunite a girl with her cat (which happens to be on a roof) you can type mouse and have the cat chase the mouse off the roof and into the little girl’s arms. Or you can type pogo stick have have Maxwell bounce up and grab the cat. If you type in lasso, you can rope the cat down. The choice is yours. The more creative you get the more points you rake in.

There are more than 220 stages to complete. The puzzle levels will require you to meet an objective in order to receive a starite. The challenge levels will have you navigating through a level to get the starite which is in plain view. Once you beat a level you can go back in master mode and beat the again. Only this time you must complete the level 3 times in a row without reusing an item once to get the starite. Sound hard? Damn straight it’s hard!

The Controls

Everything in this game is controlled using the stylus on the touchscreen. Once you’re presented with the puzzle it’s all up to you. Click on the notepad icon and type an object you would like to see on the screen. Once the object has been typed, the game clarifies what you want to appear. If you typed in balloon, it will ask if you meant hot air balloon, or helium balloon. Once it appears on screen you must click and drag where you want that object to be placed.

The game does limit what you can type. You can not use common names, places, or vulgarities. C’mon, get your mind out of the gutter! There are roughly 10,000 items in the games vocabulary. This really allows you to be creative. You can conjure up black holes to suck up enemies, monsters to scare them away, or even make an island appear!

Having so much creative power does create some problems. Items that should help you solve a problem in theory don’t always work. For example, a bully stands in front of a candy machine. You need to get to the machine to buy a candy bar but you can’t hurt him. I typed in handcuffs and cuff the bully to the machine. He still manages to beat me up and I must replay the level. I type in blindfold and blind him. He still manages to beat me up. In theory these items should work, but they don’t. Frustrating? Absolutely!

The other frustration is the control scheme. Moving objects by clicking and dragging with the stylus works well, but it causes problems when you’re trying to move Maxwell around on the screen. If you tap on the screen your character will automatically move to the place you just tapped. I can not tell you how many time Maxwell got beaten up, or fell into a pit of lava because I lifted my stylus while dragging an object across the screen! The controls are sensitive. One wrong tap and Maxwell will move without you even knowing it. This becomes a major issue when you’re trying to carefully position an object on the screen, say a bridge over a pit.  You think you’re clicking on the bridge yet Maxwell is running right into the pit you’re trying to cover up.

Each level looks as though it was pulled from a children's story book.

The Graphics

Scribblenauts has a whimsical look and feel. It looks as though many of the characters and items belong in a story book. This is quite appropriate when you consider the concept of the game. The style works, and it’s quite entertaining to see your items come to life and see what they look like.

I have to point out the music is not as entertaining. At first the children singing in the background is cute and kinda catchy, but it gets annoying very quickly. You get the same music on every single level throughout the entire game. Get stuck on a level long enough and you will be turning the volume down, if not off. You will hear the children cry “Check…check it out!” over and over in your dreams! Why couldn’t there be a few different songs?

The Bottom Line

You can’t deny Scribblenauts is a groundbreaking title. It’s the perfect game to bring along on a plane or long road trip as it has great pick up and play value. The concept alone is ingenious and for that alone, it deserves high marks.

Where Scribblenauts fails is in the controls. The game is rife with cheap deaths because of an accidental stylus tap here and there. The repetitive music playing in the background only makes those cheap deaths worse! If 5th Cell could have honed the controls a bit and added a few more music tracks, this game would be close to receiving perfect marks.

The Good

Awesome concept
Smart puzzles
Great replay value

The Bad

Not all items work like they should
Repetitive music
Sloppy controls